


Misty Ascension

by cortanaG



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Awful Timing, Bad Friends, Empathetic Conversations, Exhibitionism, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fighting, First Time, Horny Teenagers, Hurt Characters, Post-Episode: s04e13 Escape From Kadavo, Post-Episode: s05e05 Tipping Points, Random build to Romance, Really Stupid Flirting, Semi-Public Sex, Sex in the wrong place at the wrong time, Sexual Tension, Spontaneous romantic feelings, Underage - Freeform, inappropriate sex, one-sided romance, poor Rex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:20:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26287867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cortanaG/pseuds/cortanaG
Summary: While Ahsoka struggles with intrusive sexual fantasies, Rex figures it’s about time he faces some repressed feelings. Fives intends to solve some personal issues he's been having with Rex, at the worst possible time.The aftermath of consolation is a genuinely unfair thing, and yet it miraculously blooms into something.....more.
Relationships: CT-27-5555 | Fives | ARC-5555/Ahsoka Tano
Comments: 7
Kudos: 27





	1. Part One

The spontaneous creativity that had greatly aided in the rescue of an entire colony of people, _her_ people, not to mention the overall escape from Kedavo, had boosted Ahsoka’s pride considerably. She had immediately caught the feeling, however, as she’d trained herself to do, because it had been a habit with her younger self to latch onto those emotions like they were her only source of nutrition. Anakin would tell her, if she chose to share such sentiment after a mission with him, that it was natural and healthy to hold pride in one's accomplishments, especially if it meant improvement on that person’s part. Ahsoka agreed entirely, and she agreed even more firmly when Anakin told her that pride was only dangerous when it became a tool used to form the mindset that one was more _elevated,_ so to speak, than the people they chose to compare themselves to. 

However, Ahsoka experienced an alternate kind of pride, and she wasn’t even sure she could call it that. All she knew was that at the height of the action, sliding down cables and having adrenaline rush through her as she bolted to the ground, all force-controlled, that her pride in saving her people had mixed somehow with the feeling of primal desire. Commander Wolffe had been waiting for her and the colony on the ground with his troops, and when he gruffly spoke to her, his muscular, armored upper body moving in tandem with the kama swaying at his thighs, Ahsoka had felt a surge of sexual want and _power,_ incited by a _clone_ no less, because she felt she damn well could use her body to prove herself the way she’d just demonstrated intimidating leadership. 

After being scared shitless when the heat of battle finally drifted off of her, and she had time to reflect on just what the hell had crossed her mind back when she’d stared hungrily at Master Plo’s Commander, Ahsoka locked herself in her quarters and meditated. The force could only provide what she was open to receiving, however, and the familiar wash of self disappointment clouded Ahsoka’s train of thoughts _once again_ when she realized she couldn’t reach into the force for guidance if she couldn’t even accept that she’d allowed for pride and sex to cross paths. 

Then, of course, she had been rushed off to Onderon, and all of her sexual urges due to battle-like circumstances were washed away and forgotten, simply because old romantic feelings directed at a single person in her midst renewed themselves within her. Ahsoka had an alternate war with herself on that mission; from how badly Lux distracted her, to finding herself and her purpose once again, to ultimately losing feelings for him altogether. Watching Steela Gerrera’s lips collide with Lux’s sent a jolt of relief through her, because her progress, her self-improvement had been solidified; until, suddenly, it wasn’t. Losing all romantic feelings for Lux only caused her previous issue of a need for constant sexual relief after violent and strenuous activity to emerge again. 

After an unsuccessful meditation resulted in a headache, Ahsoka decided she would try and talk it through with Barriss, if she could suck it up and sit through a conversation of guaranteed judgement. To her slight relief and disappointment at the same time, that plan was cut short when Anakin called her into a briefing room to discuss their next mission. They were to depart for Cato Neimoidia with their men, on some sort of surveillance mission. 

Either way, when the 501st arrives on the planet flooded with acidic oceans, Ahsoka feels glad she has the opportunity to worry more about not puking her guts out over the side of the cliff they’d landed on and keel over a three hundred foot drop into acid that would spit her remains back up at the surface, rather than whether or not every time she solved an issue to a life and death situation she’d want to shove some poor bastard down into the dirt and dominate him right then and there. She isn’t even panicked about the thought that she may not be as controlled of a Jedi as she’d hoped she was; it’s more of a guilt that bogs down on her self confidence, like she’s in the wrong for something she can’t necessarily control, and as a result, she will never mature as planned. Whatever. Part of being strong and controlled is being in the moment, especially when her mind needs to be present for a mission. Life can be a hell lot worse for her, anyways.

Their site on Cato Neimoidia is a relatively flat terrain for a rocky expanse of forest greenery that shoots straight up into the air like a mountain. A bundle of other cliffs can be seen from their specific canyon, through the fog that rises up and conceals the ocean below. Ahsoka scrolls on her data pad, perched atop a crate that is tucked away under a long, drawn out sheet of the tent that currently houses troop supplies and other items. The planet seems to be continuously overcast, but Ahsoka likes the security she gets ducked beneath the trooper tent. Only when shuffling is heard at the slit cut into the rough fabric a few meters in front of her does Ahsoka finally lift her gaze from the glowing device in her hands. 

It’s Rex who prods further into the tent and casts Ahsoka a smile, and she feels relieved it isn’t anyone who’d end up making her feel obligated to contribute to the clones’ work outside than the….productivity of what she’s already doing. Even Rex doesn’t seem like he’d been rushing around out there, with his helmet pressed to his side beneath his arm. Ahsoka gives him her usual casual smile, and leans back on her arms after discarding the data pad beside her on the crate, just as glad when the tent’s slit swishes together and blocks out the light. 

“How are the boys doing out there, Rex?” she asks, exhaling a soft breath of air that shows just how tired she is. 

Rex walks closer to her, but when he stops it’s the most awkward of stances. Ahsoka wonders if he’s confused, because he shows no sign that his labor is needed, or that anything of use to him was underneath, this supply tent. “It’s all fine and good out there, Commander,” Rex says stiffly. “At this point the General isn’t even anticipating an attack.” 

“No _attack?_ ” Ahsoka muses under her breath, and she pinches the white stripes at her brows together. Ahsoka had been looking forward to another battle, as she is determined she could enjoy the thrilling rush of the battle’s heat and adrenaline without that strange sexual energy afterwards, because Ahsoka knew she was stronger and more self-controlled than allowing herself to be overcome with that pooling primal desire to _pounce, dominate,_ and _ravish._

Rex doesn’t even notice her disappointment.

“Don’t you ever find it so....fucked, how little we really matter in the bigger picture, sir?” Rex asks without a shred of hesitation. 

That was enough to snap Ahsoka out of her wandering thoughts as she whips her gaze up to Rex, the white stripes above her wide eyes furrowing. It would have been comical, with how blunt and relaxed Rex’s delivery was, had he not been actively avoiding Ahsoka’s gaze, tension coursing through his body and betraying the impact behind his words. 

“Wha - Rex, _what?”_ Ahsoka sputters almost indignantly, at a loss of what to say. She hadn’t quite realized something was off with Rex the second he stepped into the tent with her, but as she warms up to the energy the force provided around her, she suddenly starts to notice these things the less she’s stuck with her head up her own ass. 

Rex lets a smirk tug at his lips despite himself, and though when he takes a wandering hand off of one a crate piled up beside where Ahsoka sits, she can sense just how rueful he was after that statement by the sheepish look in his eyes when he makes eye contact. 

“Sorry, commander,” Rex says, but he merely shrugs. “Sorry, no, I didn’t - I didn’t mean it like that.” He looks away from her again, this time grinning roguishly to himself. “I guess you haven’t really heard me speak like that, and I’m sorry, it is....it’s inappropriate, it’s not regulation. But, at the same _time,_ who says so, sir, y’know?” 

Ahsoka’s met with a challenge in the way Rex stares back at her when he picks his head up again, and this time she figures he’s gotten it together enough to not look away a second time. This is a side of him she feels she hasn’t really met before, because it was almost like he was breaking conditional formality, and the energy he exhibited was a mixture of unrestrained confidence along with a desire to push his boundaries. 

“No,” Ahsoka drawls, slowly. Despite the fact that she would maintain her typical role with him, as his commander, at least for now, she feels a twinge that longs to see just how unhinged and loose Rex can get himself for her. “No, you’re fine, Captain, I - I’m not, like, _offended_ or anything. It’s just....well, what ‘bigger picture,’ Rex?” 

Maybe she was a bit more eager to see this side of him than she’d originally thought. 

“The cause, I guess,” Rex says smoothly. “What we’re fighting for. Whatever it is that the Republic embodies.” His chest was pushed forward, but not in the steadfast way it typically was; no, in this moment Rex was loyal to the one person he perhaps hasn’t allowed himself to be loyal to, not quite yet. The look plastered upon his face was almost ominous, with a cocky draw in his lips Ahsoka only notices in clones like Fives and Jesse. She tenses when Rex moves to sit beside her on the crate, pushing her torso forward from its relaxed position leaning back against her arms, and drawing her knees high enough to levitate off the edge of the crate and nearly compress her body. 

Ahsoka responds carefully, her watch on him unwavering. “You do matter, Rex.”

She couldn’t have told him a more sincere statement, but his close proximity to her while endowed with this foreign attitude unnerved her. 

“To who?” Rex retorts. “I’ve only ever mattered, like, conditionally - I was bred to specifically serve and live a life that isn’t exactly _mine,_ as a soldier for the Republic, so it’s not like I ever had a choice of which side I fought for.” He laughs to himself after that, taking on a philosophy Ahsoka knows the normal Rex would beat himself to death for coming across. “Not that I give a fuck about the Separatists,” he continues heartily, “ _hell_ no, but, I think you know what I mean.”

It was strange for Ahsoka to be listening to him talk the way he was; she wasn’t stupid, or necessarily sheltered from the clones. Ahsoka knows Rex engages in colloquial talk from time to time with his brothers, when he didn’t need to portray an authoritative facade, and maybe a few beers in, and maybe not. Either way, she knew it had always been like Rex to refrain from unraveling such a display before Ahsoka, the young padawan of General Skywalker she was. She’s always wondered if he knew what she’s engaged in in the past, or how she spoke with the other padawans in their free time by the temple fountains or cooped up in the library, common examples of how the lack of innocence has overtaken her life. 

That didn’t matter now, even as they seemed to have taken ten steps forward in their previously strict and occasionally juvenile relationship. What matters is that Ahsoka quickly understands she was here with him in his altered state because he chose to confide in _her_. Her lack of initial recognition in his force signature and understanding of what it was he was going through, was completely irrelevant if she was going to be there for a friend. 

Perhaps a distraction had come for her after all. 

“Rex,” Ahsoka cooes, and she relaxes beside him, believing it best to be as open and comforting as she could. “You matter to me.” 

She suddenly pauses. “Are you - are you okay?”

Rex’s plated knee begins to bounce, his broad thighs spread wide in such a casual manner that they nearly touch Ahsoka’s legs. When she takes notice of this a fleeting thought of Wolffe passes through her mind, but it’s sharply shaken away, as Ahsoka grounds herself in her current priorities. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?” Rex asks with a snort. The quick rhythm ricocheting throughout his body tells Ahsoka he is uneasy, as comfortable as he makes himself right next to her. 

She sighs. “I don’t know Rex, I guess I just don’t know where this is coming from.”

The air between them suddenly shifts when Rex stills, no more impulsive movement, and their eyes lock with differing conveyance of emotion. “No, you’re right,” Rex says heavily after a pause, his voice tinged with sorrowful defeat. “I’m sorry, commander, disregard all that bullshit. I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.” 

Rex shakes his head as if he couldn’t believe himself, and wanted nothing more than to stroll straight off the cliff their site was parked on top of. Ahsoka had warmed up not many seconds before, her knees pointed in his direction as they sat side by side, but now she blinks as she watches him pop up with devastation to his feet and head with more tension than he’d come in with towards the tent opening. 

“I should probably go see Kix for whatever bug’s infested this bucket head, huh?” Rex says, mumbling, nearly to himself, without bothering to look back at Ahsoka. 

Panicking, and not even just because her distraction was parting, Ahsoka instinctively springs down from the crate and calls after him. “No, Rex, wait!”

Rex’s steps falter, and he pauses, but Ahsoka watches the back of his blond head as it shakes in devastation, like it was an irritating burden to comply by her concern.

“Rex, you deserve someone to talk to. You can talk to me,” Ahsoka begins, as heartfelt as she knows how to be. She wants to be helpful in every way possible, of course, but she doesn’t stop it when her arms come to fold across her chest. “You just need to tell me what’s going on with you, because it’s obviously something weighing heavily on your mind, and I promise I’ll be as...understanding as possible. Whatever you need, I’m here for it.” 

Ahsoka wonders if she wanted to say all of that because it was true to the connection between the both of them, or because she had a way with stringing pretty words together and it was the _kind_ , _correct_ thing to say in the moment. 

All the same, Rex heaves a throaty sigh, gruff with whatever grief he was suffering, and turns around to face her. The part of Ahsoka she most hates about herself wishes he hadn’t turned around, wishes she didn’t have to face the tired conflict shining dully through his eyes. 

“You wouldn’t be angry with me?” he asks her. 

Ahsoka’s mouth tightens. “No, Rex.” 

“You wouldn’t….think of me any other way?” While his voice strains to uphold a steadiness that should be easy enough for a clone captain to harbor within himself, Ahsoka sees the silent, sturdy plea on Rex’s face. It was a vulnerable, _loud_ look; specifically for her, she thinks. “Think of me _differently?_ ” 

She suddenly wonders what Rex thinks she _currently_ feels about him, but. “I couldn’t.” 

Ahsoka worries that the sudden hesitance that renews within Rex derives from the possibility that he perceives her as unreciprocative to his topic of conversation. “You’re not obliged to…. _be this way,_ with me, commander,” he says, almost bashfully. 

If Ahsoka was going to get to the bottom of this mess, she was going to make sure Rex was at least the one doing this right. Not that they were off to the best start. “Please, Rex, for the love of -” Ahsoka groans, and her hands fall to her hips. “It’s _Ahsoka_.” 

“Ahsoka.” 

She takes a moment to replenish the air between them, wishing to start anew. “What’s on your mind?” 

“I can’t tell you,” Rex says solemnly. 

“What? Why not?” 

Rex grows strangely uncomfortable, and averts his eyes from Ahsoka’s. “I mean, I can’t just blurt it out, Ahsoka,” he mumbles. “I’d feel like I was saying something illegal if I did.” 

Ahsoka blinks stupidly at him. “Um, alright…. _illegal…_.” she begins rather awkwardly. “We’ll start this out slowly, then. How - how have you been feeling lately? How are you...holding up, I guess?” 

“You don’t have to baby me through this. I don’t need that.” For the first time, Ahsoka notices something….quite _off,_ about Rex’s force signature. Even as he side steps farther into the tent, away from its opening, he’s more than just blatantly uncomfortable, or awkward. No, this is hard for him for seemingly a completely different reason. “Fuck, I don’t even know what I want, I don’t know why I’m - I don’t know why I came to you, you must think I’m fucking crazy. I’m sor-”

Ahsoka quickly holds a hand up. “I’m gonna stop you right there. Don’t apologize for anything, Rex, please. Sometimes - I get it, y’know? Sometimes it’s not about talking, it’s just about having someone be there with you. Like a presence.” 

Rex’s saddened eyes jerk up a bit when she moves, cautiously closer to where he stands. It’s Ahsoka’s presence, specifically, that quickens his heart beat and makes his breath hitch as she sidles up to him. 

Frozen on the spot, Rex exhales shakily as Ahsoka’s hands gently enclose around his. “Absolutely, fucking....pathetic,” he whispers. 

Ahsoka looks up into his face, slipping her fingers over his and bringing their hands between them. “No, it’s not. It’s okay, to break down every now and again, as long as you eventually get your shit together, you know?” 

Ahsoka doesn’t want to force anything between them, because she can feel the vulnerability and conflict weighing heavily through Rex. The contact of their hands sends Rex’s eyes to her unwavering gaze. She smiles at him. Something hopeful refreshens across his face, and he doesn’t exactly smile back, but he looks over Ahsoka like this is the first time he’s laid eyes on her. Ahsoka relinquishes her hold on his gloved hands, much larger and emitting more warmth than hers, in favor of wrapping her arms around his middle, bulky with his armor, as she steps into him and leans her head against the plates of his chest. 

Ahsoka fixes her eyes on a netted box across the tent, in a shadowy spot, where the corners of datapads overflow from the top and stick out. She’s grateful her face is hidden when a smirk slowly tugs at her lips, because she can feel Rex’s immediate hesitation. Whatever it was he was struggling with, seems to mix with the decision he was currently faced with to either wait out her administered hug, or place his arms around her as well. Ahsoka was giving him the option to seek out comfort, of course, instead of struggling with the additional stress of whether or not he should forget about his internal issue and abide by his protocol. 

Because he definitely isn’t, when he relaxes for the first time against her touch, nudging a hand gently under her back lek to hug her shoulders while the other slides cautiously over the bare expanse of her back. 

“Is this okay?” he murmurs, his breath hot over the tip of her montral. 

A slight hum purrs from the back of Ahsoka’s throat, more in amusement to herself than as a noise of confirmation for Rex. She finds herself wishing hard, grimy plastoid wasn’t the material between them, so she could directly feel the warmth of his body and so that he could feel whatever noises came from her mouth rumble against his skin. A fleeting moment passes where Ahsoka wonders if she’d instinctively hugged him because she wanted to push Rex’s guarded boundaries in a friendly way, or if her recent dilemma has influenced her enough to play into her decisions, and she was making them out of the curiosity to feel contact, the intimacy of another body - 

Ahsoka quickly dismisses it, because she wants to use the hug to reach into the force radiating off of Rex and dig up whatever it was that was bursting throughout his head like a storm. She senses his uneasiness, which was rooted in a deeper feeling of disappointment and frustration directed at himself. His judgement on how to deal with himself was highly prejudiced and clouded by the very premise of his existence. Ahsoka feels her own heart sag a bit, because it’s true that she cares about him and his well-being, and she doesn’t want to fiddle any further into the depths of Rex’s mind to prevent herself from feeling any worse….

Until Ahsoka’s breath suddenly hitches, sharply, her hands palming tighter around the back of his armor. The thought of protecting herself against Rex’s hurt emotions is so _ridiculous_ , so utterly _selfish_ \- because she’s just traced his shame and hesitance back to why he’s here with _her_ , discussing this with _her_ , losing his damn mind while trying to get a grip on himself next to _her_. 

“I’ve got you,” she lets exhale from her mouth, swiftly and barely audible. Her heart was suddenly thudding like a turret in her chest, nearly wracking her whole body, and she hasn’t felt more grateful for his thick armor blocking any closer contact between them. 

Ahsoka has to maintain herself for him, despite her new discovery. She _has_ to. The hug lasts only until Ahsoka is sure she can face Rex as a composed and comforting friend. When she does pull away from him, smiling shyly up at him, she’s lucky that he immediately has something prepared to knock off his chest. 

“As a soldier there are certain things I need to ignore and overcome,” Rex says. His fingers come up to curl beneath Ahsoka’s elbows, holding her before him, and the gleam in his eyes is that of more confidence and trusting he’s so far allowed himself to have in Ahsoka. “I’ve been trained and conditioned my whole life, so, I think it’s pretty obvious us clones can stuff emotions and what the fuck ever deep down pretty damn well, but...lately, there’s been something that’s so...uncontrollable. Like I can always forgive my brothers, and even _myself_ for war mistakes, and deaths, and I _can_ get over all of it. I’m not stressed. But I have this…. fucking _plague_ in my head that won’t leave me alone. I - I never even knew that it was _possible_.” 

He’s hardly brushed the surface on this. “What’s so uncontrollable?” Ahsoka croaks. 

Rex shakes his head, and his eyes flutter shut for a moment in rough contemplation. “I don’t even know, it goes beyond my training, it goes beyond anything I was _meant_ for. I wasn’t meant for this….feeling.” 

Ahsoka sucks her bottom lip between her teeth when an irrevocable blush swells on her face, an orange color deep and glowy. She was positive she didn’t deserve the force’s aid in her comfort here, at this exact moment, but she was so overtly thankful when Rex’s hands slip from her arms, so that they’re standing close to one another, _comfortably,_ but they no longer touch. “You want my honest opinion?” Ahsoka rather blurts out. “This is something Anakin and I have talked about before, but only vaguely, cause, y’know. We go in too deep about philosophies the Jedi might not agree with, and all of a sudden Kenobi’s there, shoving it up Anakin’s ass that -”

“Right, right….”

“Well, yeah, anyways, you should be allowed to feel whatever it is you need to feel. Because then, Rex, you can work through it.” Ahsoka thinks she must sound stupid with what she’s saying. But, in her defense, she did feel it was all necessary; she needed some sort of outlet, too, to let whatever came to her mind run out naturally, right? “And you can learn to better handle it the next time it comes up, instead of stuffing it away and having it build up until it’s this fucking tumor you can’t ever get rid of.” 

It sounds so….personal. And it is obvious she is speaking from experience, whatever that might have been. Ahsoka and Rex both laugh, clearing their own air. “Are you pulling my own ‘experience’ spiel shit on me?” Rex asks, grinning. 

“Any day, Captain. You scar a fourteen year old, and that’s what you get.” 

Rex smiles fondly at her. Ahsoka still regrets it, though, when the corners of his mouth draw up solemnly. “Look, I still have a duty, Ahsoka,” he says. “I still need to be focused and….all _there,_ for the _men_ and also for what I’m supposed to be fighting for. I don’t get luxuries, that’s just the way it is.” 

For a moment, Ahsoka doesn’t even know what to say. _He deserves those luxuries,_ she thinks. _What he feels, he deserves to enjoy feeling that way._

“I don’t want to see you so overworked, Rex,” she replies, tiredly. “I’m just….giving it to you how _I_ see it - if, you let yourself feel whatever it is that you’re feeling, then you can have better _control_ over it. I’m not saying to let it consume you, but, don’t act like you’re an inferior being. You have _needs,_ you have - a life.” 

That is a lot heavier than Ahsoka had anticipated.

“All I know, Ahsoka, is war. I know how to strategize and plan. But I don’t think I can apply that to this - fucking _emotional_ shit. I would have to act on it and that’s - that’s impossible.” Rex’s voice begins to shake, and Ahsoka worries that all of the work she’s administered on him just to warm him up to the idea of her _comfort_ and advice was blown out the airlock when his facial expression turns sour, and he takes a step back away from her.

Distressed at seeing him so hurt, Ahsoka doesn’t think before she speaks. “Maybe acting on it is what you need. If it helps, do it,” she says, affirmatively. “You should explore your options, especially if this is new territory for you.”

She’d said that like she had no idea what the consequences could be. Rex looks at her. He’s not aware that she truly does, though. 

“No,” he states firmly. “No, I’m not acting on them.” 

“Why not?” 

“Trust me on this one, will you? It wouldn’t be smart. I’d be breaking the fucking law.” 

Ahsoka guffaws at the way he puts that. Her judgement in handling this situation was so damn _clouded,_ but she‘s spurred on by the fact that every word out of her mouth would be entirely believable and loyal to her personal mode of thinking, in a setting where she was perhaps ignorant of the situation. As innocent as she was making herself out to be now. “Breaking the law? The hell are you talking about? What kinds of emotions are you feeling?”

“I don’t want to risk a lot of things,” Rex snaps, but his voice is edged with a sharp weakness. Whatever it is they’re saying to each other, they aren’t spewing it nicely. “I have to avoid jeopardizing myself, and, potentially…. _other_ people….that is the top priority for me. It has to be, I can’t be a fucking selfish prick, but….there’s just one other reason involved.” 

Ahsoka feels confident that he never would have said that last bit if he wasn’t soon going to deliver the one blatant fact he’s been avoiding. 

“What is it?” she asks, innocently. By the seemingly betrayed look Rex suddenly flashes her, Ahsoka has pried too hard. 

“I’m a child,” he snarls at himself, in no way an acknowledgement of Ahsoka’s question. “I’m such a juvenile _asshole_ , and I fucking hate myself.” 

Ahsoka winces. “If you hate yourself then I can’t even imagine how you must feel about me.” 

That is entirely the wrong thing to say, she realizes with a blazing surge of fear, because Rex has no issue baring his eyes into her as she tries to visibly hide the fact that her attempt to lighten the mood was a harsh, stinging friendly fire of ammo. His eyes are cold, all of his previous relaxation at her confidence has hardened into doubt and possible awareness of Ahsoka’s….deception. She doesn’t want to accept he’s so suddenly cut off from her, willing to double down on how he feels even _harder,_ despite its effects _so_ prominent in their entire interaction under this tent. Ahsoka also doesn’t want to accept that it’s one hundred percent absolutely her fault; selfishly, of course, for the good of their friendship. 

“Please explain it to me, Rex. I’m here for you,” she tries, softly and full of feeling, and she steps towards him. They’re back at square one, and they haven’t even gotten _that_ far, because when Ahsoka reaches for Rex’s hands as her last half-assed attempt to coerce him into saying what she wants to hear, he’s already taken the time to recover from his breakdown. She looks up into his face as her thumbs rub soothing circles over his knuckles, and he watches her movements with a lack of interest. The thought of how much more _intense_ and utterly _hurtful_ his repressed emotions will emerge the next time they overwhelm him to the point he loses all mental control is daunting. There can only be so many times this happens, each worse and more painful than the last, until he’s no longer able to straighten himself out by the end of it. 

Like what he does right now. Like how he lifts his eyes, unfeeling and unapologetic, to meet Ahsoka’s gaze and does everything he can to prevent himself from twisting his mouth into a snarl at her. “Maybe you shouldn’t be,” he says, and it would have been gentle. Would have been. 

Ahsoka immediately lets his hands drop, recoiling backwards as she stares up at him in shock, at a loss for words. 

Again, she does _not_ at _all_ deserve the electronic beep that pierces the tense atmosphere between her and the captain, saving her from embarrassment that she definitely _did_ deserve before the jarring sternness of her Master’s voice bursts out from the commlink on her armlet.

 _Alright, Snips, it’s time for my lovely, pleasantly delightful padawan to cut out the moping this fine morning and get her sorry headtails over to her charming master at the outpost station right this_ very _second. Move it, Ahsoka._

Ahsoka scoffs quietly and doesn’t bother to respond. 

“I’ve got to go,” she says, and she flashes Rex a meek glance. 

Rex nods. “Sounds like it. He always that rude?” His voice is casual, but surely returning to his typical formality. Rex stands there, his body not stiff nor tense with uncertainty, but rather controlled, like a solid wall that could in no way be affected by Ahsoka’s presence, when that had so obviously not been the case mere minutes ago. 

“You’re usually standing right next to him, Rex, sometimes I think you’d know better than me,” Ahsoka says. The moment between them has to end on a mutual note, but Ahsoka has already ruined the chances of that becoming a reality. She’ll attempt, anyway, even as she awkwardly sidesteps to the tent opening further away from Rex and his stony glare. 

Ahsoka nods at him as her ankles twist expertly around one another, not daring to move a facial muscle. “Hang in there, okay?” she tries. “You ever wanna comm me, or something, just know you’d never be bothering me. Not everything has to be professional.” Ahsoka will leave it at that, despite the fact that Rex is unfazed and doesn’t react. 

As she turns to walk out through the slit of the tent, another body, much taller and bulkier than her own, moves to enter at the same time, and she’s uncertain as to why her senses never kick in when embarrassing shit happens, but Ahsoka gasps loudly as she collides with plastered armor and bucks sideways off her own damn feet. 

“Oh! Fuck,” she hisses, scrunching her face as a quick pair of hands seizes her back from careenining in a downright maladroit manner to the floor. Ahsoka feels heat settle in her face at the realization that she’s just exclaimed profanity Anakin would cut her tongue out for, and with her heart pounding in uncertainty she looks wildly up into the face of a cautious Fives. 

“Sorry, Commander,” he says with a light laugh. His hands fall from Ahsoka’s arms when he’s sure she’s stabilized. The look in his eyes tells her he’s definitely heard her explicit gasp, and he finds it utterly amusing. “Didn’t mean to...knock you off your feet there.” 

“No, you’re okay, Fives,” Ahsoka says with a pathetic wave of her hand, the heat of the embarrassing moment still washing through her. “Sorry you had to - hear that from me.” 

“Don’t be. It was kind of sexy.” Fives’s expression, which they both realize is rather close to Ahsoka’s own flushed state, portrays immediate terror in what he’s just jokingly let slip out of his mouth. 

Ahsoka finds it so amusing how little the clones were truly willing to say around her. She likes jokes, she thought she made that pretty obvious. Grinning at him with white, sparkling teeth, Ahsoka pushes her boundaries with a mock-offended tone of voice. “Woah. You know what? Fuck yourself, _trooper_.”

If she could count on anyone to catch on and adapt it’d be the one ARC always so quick to deduce the situation. 

“With pleasure, commander,” Fives offers her with a final relaxed salute. Ahsoka slips out of the tent, without a glance back at Rex, her eyes locked onto Fives’s gaze with an entranced glow about her face that Rex notices had _not_ been there when she was talking with him, as sentimental and heartfelt as their conversation was. He tries to ignore how badly that hurts, the indication she’s willing to put on a facade for Rex before dropping it the moment some other dumbass steps in - but, whatever. It was probably nothing. 

Rex is going to take it out on this asshole, anyways.

“Fives.”

Fives snaps back to Rex with a sloppy grin. “Sir?”

Rex sighs steadily as he folds his arms over his chest. “The hell are you doing in here?”

Fives takes a stupid moment to pause before casting his palm about the room. “Well, I guess I’m here to ask you the same question, sir.”

Rex in no way appreciates the way Fives raises a brow like his intentions were obvious. “If you’ve come to bother me, then leave. I’m busy,” Rex growls, his tone sharp and mean. 

It was apparent the captain was in a pretty bad mood, but Fives knows better than to assume there’s legitimate work needed to be done under this maintenance tent. His gaze fixated in an unwavering manner upon Rex, Fives cautiously begins to walk forward. “Excuse me for my…. _abrupt_ behavior, sir, but busy doing what? I promise I’m just curious.”

Rex scoffs hard, and spins sharply on his heel to stand in any direction that isn’t directly facing Fives. He didn’t know what he was going to have to do to isolate himself, but in this moment he favored contemptuously barking Fives away over exposing his rather embarrassing mental state again. “I didn’t fucking _suggest_ you get out and leave me alone, Fives,” Rex says, and he figures his safest bet is to at least stand near where a mere facade of work can be supposed. “I am _telling_ you to move your ass and get out.”

Fives watches Rex sulk towards a box of datapads, nestled away in a dark corner of the tent. 

“You’re not exactly subtle about being fucking pissed off,” Fives calls after him.

Rex groans as he slumps onto a crate, more interested in the fact that his luck had been so brutally squashed today than his lack of decency towards who was supposed to be a friend. “The fuck’s it to you?” He tries to sound threatening, but he just sounds exhausted, if anything. It’s probably the reason Fives was sticking around. “I’m two seconds away from comming the General and requesting your shipment to Kamino for reconditioning.”

In no way does that prevent Fives from stalking closer to Rex’s perch atop the crate. “For fuck’s sake, calm down, Captain, will you?” The warning twitch in Rex’s mouth and upturned nose was obvious, but Fives was the most resilient clone he knew. “All I’m saying is you don’t have to pick a fight and lie to me. I _mean_ , I _just_ had something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“And all I’m saying is I’d rather you go sticking your nose up some shiny’s ass than my business.”

Fives crosses his arms when he comes to a stop a few feet away from the datapad box. His narrowed eyes counter Rex’s unrelenting glare of authority with his usual gleam of a rebellious, sometimes utterly unnecessary challenge. “You don’t have any work to do in here, do you?” he says, slowly. “Can I at least keep you company while you hide yourself away to pout?”

Rex doesn’t know if his irritably petulant mood went unchecked by an absent sense of shame because he pities himself so badly, but he has an implacable fury directed at Fives that he isn’t letting up. “Will you watch the way you fucking talk to me?” Rex mindlessly banters, his rank the one excuse he was allowing himself to latch onto. “Gods, Fives, what the hell is it? Can you get whatever it is on your chest out in the open so you can fuck off? I don’t get it.”

Fives remains planted before Rex’s dangling legs, and his fingers begin to tap over his armor as his gaze swivels around them to confirm a perceptible conjecture. “What just happened in here, before I came in?” Fives questions. 

“Excuse me?”

Fives lifts his chin. “Between you and the commander. A fight?”

Rex shakes his head and screws his face up in a show of disgust, deciding he doesn’t care if Fives falls victim to his abuse. He _deserves_ it. “Is your life really that fucking boring that you need to pry into mine?” he seethes. 

The way Fives stands his ground and remains unfazed is just plain _annoying_ at this point. “No, I’m just trying to justify _for_ you why you feel the need to bite at my throat.” Fives hesitates. The second Rex sees the way Fives’s brow quirks in genuine concern, he fixates his eyes on the ground, huffing steadily to control the bubbling conflict of emotion within his chest. “Rex, did you -”

“Whatever’s about to come out of your mouth, don’t fucking finish it.”

Rex hopes that didn’t sound like confirmation to the inferred speculation, but he knows Fives at least won’t delve into it any further. 

“Fine. There was something I wanted to privately address with you, sir. Regarding the company’s current dynamic.” Fives’s tone goes sour and somewhat pitiless. Rex isn’t sure if this new approach to his disposition is any better, because he feels a cold sting suddenly flood his veins, chilling the blood that has previously been boiling with fiery incongruity. 

“Torrent’s having dynamic issues?” Rex mumbles, trying to sound insouciant towards the matter, as if it had no real attestation to fall back on and could be disregarded. He fails, however, sounding instead like he might shatter into pieces if Fives produced the very real, very underlying problem at hand into their conversation. 

“Coric _dragged_ Kix’s ass away from a dead shiny in the medic bay back on Coruscant. He was kicking and screaming, damn near _clawed_ Coric’s eyes out trying to get back to that poor _vod,_ ” Fives deadpans. “We found Kix crying, Rex, fucking _crying_ over this kid, stabbing needles into his arms and slamming his chest with his fists. Turns out his heart gave out for good a whole _thirty minutes_ before Coric and I got there. Kix is the most well put-together out of all of us. It was Jesse who sat alone with him in the ‘fresher for a good five hours. They typically share a bunk anyways, but, you know. They were up pretty late.”

Rex is grateful when Fives stops talking, though it does nothing to stop the pressure behind his ears and the sting fanning outwards from his aching heart. He slowly slides off the crate, unsure he could move any faster if he wanted to, until he’s fully facing Fives. 

Rex is still guarded, still weak, but he hopes that behind his enervating expression his eyes can at least convey that the reason for their company’s recent emotional disarray has been his ignominy. He feels a lot of things; he’s regretful, and ashamed, and slightly embarrassed, and if anyone is going to expose his lack of courage to face the repercussions of his actions, it’s Fives. He doesn’t expect Fives will hold any sympathy, or at the least pity, because his current gaze is cold and hardened into that of harsh contempt. 

Rex should have been standing up to talk with Fives the second Ahsoka left the tent. “I could go on, sir. We’ve got some more stories,” Fives drawls. 

“What would you like me to do?” Rex asks, his voice a low whisper. It is coated in the stress that pools back into him, unregulated stress that had drained from him while taking some time away from the 501st to accompany the jedi on missions like the undercover one to Kedavo, and when he trained inexperienced rebel terrorists to properly execute their own dirty work. 

“What would I like you to _do?_ ” Fives seethes through grit teeth. He’s absolutely fuming now. “I’d like you to fix your mistake, Captain. I’d very much appreciate it if you would step up and maybe communicate with your company.”

Rex releases a very undignified scowl, an exasperated grunt. “Communicate _what,_ Fives? What more do I have to say that hasn’t already been said? I’ve been over this with you already, on our leave on Coruscant, remember? I told you how sorry I was, how much I value you and your opinion, and, unfortunately, what’s done is _done._ But I can still admit that I didn’t do the right -”

“Do _not_ undermine the larger situation at hand here!” Fives interrupts him. “And I damn well know what’s done is done, Rex, don’t fucking patronize me. What you and I talked about was between me and you, no one else, and we worked through it just fine. So why can’t you do the same for the whole company? I’m _telling_ you, face to face, that there’s still a tension that hasn’t been worked out yet in the five-oh-first, and it’s affecting the men negatively. Get that pampering Jedi stick out of your ass, _sir,_ and do something about it, _please._ ” 

Rex isn’t sure how controlled Fives feels, but he knows that he himself is struggling to properly grasp the distinction between physical movement and verbal expression. They’ve gravitated towards one another in their tense fight, noses almost brushing, breastplates nearly scuffing. It suddenly occurs to Rex how comfortable it is for brothers to get this close, no matter what type of atmosphere sat between them. Right now, it was chalked full of fury, but each man emitted his rage for an entirely different reason. 

“I care about my men and their well-being more than anything. But I’d appreciate it if you didn’t waltz up to me whenever the fuck you feel like it and tell me how to be a captain,” Rex says. He knows that the indignation sounding in his voice is deceptive, backed up by no authentic merit. Fives grimaces at him, his eyes burning with his disappointment in Rex, with the disbelief that his captain would stand his ground behind a flimsy wall of rage-fuelled pride. 

“I wouldn’t feel the need to offer my opinion if you were able to see it for yourself,” Fives fires back. 

It takes a lot for Rex to hold back a repressed scream, a wild exclamation of distress, rumbling dangerously in the back of his throat. “You ever take a step back?” he says, once again without thinking. He can feel Fives’s breath against his cheeks, hot and saturated with resentment. “Do you ever fucking think before assuming your opinion is just the right one?”

“It’s always been right in the past, Rex, there’s a reason I go out of my way to voice my opinion every time,” Fives replies smoothly. There’s a pause as sudden apprehension forces Rex’s skin to prickle uncomfortably at the word, _past._ Fives knows what he’s done, giving Rex the time to let it sink in before he administers the final blow. “My _opinion_ saved our battalion when Hardcase and I stole enemy fighters. It was my _voice_ that opposed that slime-slugging shitball and convinced our troops to do the right thing. It even saved my own ass, from, oh, I don’t know, _death._ By a _fucking_ firing squad.”

Rex feels as a sharp pain penetrates his heart, cascading him through with foregone sensitivities concerning what Fives has just hit over his head like a spiked baton. _Umbara._ He had effectively pushed that experience off of his conscience, using the exact same mentality he has just explained to Fives for justification, along with his singular missions to Kedavo and Onderaan. He’s not about to revisit the prodigious regret and shame he associates with it. 

“Fucking hells, Fives, we’re right back at square one,” Rex says, when he’s back to being dutifully composed. He doesn’t want to stare Fives in the face - he’s also not ready to admit it’s because he doesn’t deserve to - but he won’t tear his defeated gaze away from Fives’s withering stare. “I’d say I’m pretty clear-headed now, after you so graciously humbled me-”

Fives rolls his eyes. 

“- but I have men to lead into battle, men to protect. I can’t risk distraction, Fives, my duty doesn’t call for it, and neither does theirs. It’s my job to ensure that qualification is met.”

Rex wholeheartedly believes what he says this time, but in no way does his sentiment prevent Fives from scoffing dramatically in his face. “ _Distraction?_ Oh, Rex -” Oh _shit,_ he sounds like he actually _pities_ the man. “- you’re really going to try and preach to me about fucking _distractions_ to my face?”

Fives sounds incredulous, but utterly serious. Color drains from Rex’s face as he swallows thickly, wondering how much deeper this pit he’s digging himself into can get. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You can’t shake me off your back that easily, Captain. I’m doing my duty to protect the men as well, and if there’s any lingering uneasiness that needs to get squashed out of them, I will find whatever it takes to do that.”

The tension between them is quickly escalating from the flow of verbal abuse to brushes of their chalky armor, _physical,_ nearly pressed up against one another. “What did you mean before, Fives? About distractions?” Rex asks, hardly recognizing his own voice in such a meek tone. 

“I mean no disrespect, of course, but I’m merely _suggesting,_ out of the courtesy of my superb observance skills, that there are other concerns at the front of your mind than the proper recovery of your own men,” Fives states, and he’s finally pushed the boundary. 

It’s a twitching game of preservation, at this point; but Rex makes the first move by bumping their breastplates and staggering forwards only slightly, more of a timid proposal, a move that is perhaps fitting for Rex’s internal predicament. “I already warned you,” he raves gravely. “Watch. Your. Fucking. _Mouth._ You’re the one who needs to get their priorities in order.”

Fives only sneers. They’re so close in proximity that Rex can feel Fives’s muscles coil beneath his armor. “Nice manipulation tactic, sir, but I wouldn’t talk about priorities if I were you. I’m not the one who’s treating my men like dirt in favor of drooling over the thought of my dick between some blue-striped headtails -”

Rex surprises himself when he proves to be the one who ascends their conflict to its physical peak, but he’s still languid and reserved, a reflection of the shame that poisons his bloodstream like some damn nanodroids. He grasps Fives’s pauldron with both hands, spinning them around until his momentum allows him to shove Fives against the stacks of crates, but by then Fives is already writhing against him, his hands shooting out to fight back. 

Rex doesn’t want to hurt Fives, he’s not really all that upset with Fives, which is at least half of the reason why the bright bout of red flashing behind his eyes hasn’t compelled him to swing fists or administer some twisting motion that could really flatten his ass to the ground. It’s messy, and more of a flurry of grunts and groans as they bare teeth at one another, swapping positions up against the crates and absorbing several dizzying gauntlet hits to the face.

The next thing he knows, Rex crashes to the ground and is suddenly pinned there, Fives atop of him with wild fury blazing in his eyes. He squirms, of course, but the dead spark of hopelessness and failure that has been buzzing painfully in him for the past three weeks, combined with the sheer vulnerability of his position under a fully operative and hot-blooded ARC trooper, tells him to accept what he should have received the second his forefinger trembled blindly against that trigger, giving plenty of time for the blast that ultimately made the General slump lifelessly in his cell to release from the blaster in Dogma’s hands, not his. 

Curdling pain explodes all over Rex’s face as he succumbs to plated fists pounding ruthlessly upon him. The most he does is fumble his hands at Fives’s midsection, which hovers over his own placart, while aimlessly shifting his body against the ground, but Rex is basically consenting to Fives taking out all of his pent up hurt and rage unto him. It’s obvious, however, and Fives _must_ be aware that Rex has gone completely lax for him; Fives refuses to relent, all the same. 

Rex hadn’t made out the hurried scuffling of bodies entering the tent and rushing over to him and Fives through his haze of agony, but it feels like only a matter of seconds before there’s shouting and panicked movement, and Fives is finally hauled off of him. Rex lays on his back, eyes screwed up as he groans, the labored huffing and panting of Fives no longer directly resonating into his ears. Someone steps over him, hands hooking beneath his pauldron as they lift him to his feet. Rex blinks his eyes open and winces through the horrid ache in his face, his flesh numbed and sensitive. He struggles to ground himself back into his surroundings, which the furrow in his brows suggests he’s desperate to do. Rex leans into the body who has a strong arm around his torso and who has strung Rex’s arm over his shoulders to offer the utmost support. The pain-induced stunned trance that Rex briefly experiences, which to him seems foggier than their campsite outside the tent, begins to fade as a rush of noises articulate in his ears, primarily his own ragged breathing and incessant heartbeat. Rex can see that Fives is also standing, and despite the fact that he doesn’t need another body’s support, it’s clear that someone has their arms linked through Fives’s from behind, stilling him as much as possible.

“Woah, _woah,_ Fives -” Jesse exclaims, yanking back on Fives’s arms as he continues to thrash against his hold. His face is a mix of confusion and shock, but it’s apparent he’d acted quickly in the moment. 

“This is _his_ fault -” Fives pants, heaving almost desperately for air and to cry out in rage. “Godsdamn, fucking - _asshole!_ ”

“Hey! Shut it, Fives, the fuck’s gotten into you?” Rex winces as an authoritative voice rings out strongly, so close to his ear, until he realizes that it belongs to Kix, who’d been the one to lift him to his feet and who’s the same person he’s leaning against right now. 

“The fuck even _happened_ in here,” Jesse mumbles, his voice fairly low over Fives’s jostling shoulder. _Jesse?_ How had he been at the ready only moments after their fight broke out? 

“Just let me get on top of him, he _knows_ he deserves it-”

“Fives, calm down, _vod,_ come on! He’s the _Captain,_ you don’t want to -”

“Get off me! Let me - _Jesse,_ I swear I’m -”

“That’s _enough._ ”

Fives doesn’t go completely still, but he does settle back to catch his breath, huffing hard and seething with hate. The eyes Rex had stared up into while getting his lights knocked out have simmered out of their cruel frustration, but not by much. Fives’s teeth are grit at him, bared and snarling, and Rex finds himself watching with more clarity under the security of Kix’s arm. 

“Until you’re _actually_ ready to make up with one another, don’t try it again,” Kix continues, his voice strong and authoritative. Rex peeks at a bulging jawline and eyes that glare fixedly over in Fives’s direction. He wonders why he’s never understood the obedience Kix has always been capable of contriving even out of the most unruly trooper. “I’m not treating a broken nose or wasting a single bandage on you two. This is so ridiculous.” 

“Am I bleeding?” Rex asks, mainly so he can focus on something other than the stinging gravity of the truth behind Kix’s words. 

“Not really, sir,” Jesse answers. “Just….red. And kind of swollen.”

“I’ll give the assessment,” Kix snaps. He turns to Rex with a look behind his inspectory gaze that is no kinder than the one he’s been giving Fives, and they make eye contact. “You’re fine, Rex. Now come on, the General’s waiting.”

At that, his primary senses doused under a strict command structure shuffle in past the fiery stinging in his face along with the painful tremble the rest of his body feels, and Rex doesn’t object to being led towards the tent opening while at Kix’s side. The issue at hand proves to be just as explosive as it had been before, though, making its mark even before Rex fully refocuses, untangling his arms and torso with Kix while walking merely with their shoulders brushing and Kix’s cautionary hand hovering at his back plate. 

“ _What?_ You’re not leaving!” Fives demands. “I’m tired of this just as much as all of you are! We’re finishing this, _now._ ”

Kix is already glowering at Fives before Rex can come to a halt and fully wheel himself around. 

“Are you kidding me right now, Fives?” Kix hisses. “Yeah, suggest a fucking fist fight between you and the Captain, that’ll fly by real well. I’m surprised Rex hasn’t suggested you be court martialed to General Skywalker by now.”

Kix has hinted that the General is expecting him. Rex’s throat suddenly tightens, but he forces his feet to plant in one place. 

“That’s not helping, Kix,” Jesse says, but there’s an uneasy edge to his voice as opposed to him confirming the side he’s picked. 

“He’s right,” Rex says before he can stop himself, and he’s referring to Fives. “I can’t have this going on anymore. Fives has something to talk through with me, and I’m going to listen.”

They have always treated Rex’s word as the solidifying factor, and right now is no different. Endowed with their separate energies, Kix and Jesse still both itch with the want to leave the tent. The obstructive vigor Fives has exhibited towards finishing his business with Rex shifts, too, subsiding into visible confusion. His mouth curves into disbelief and his eyes portray a somewhat pliable aversion. 

“What Jesse and I just walked in on doesn’t make me think that’s possible right now,” Kix says flatly. “Fives seems a bit too unhinged at the moment for normal conversation.” He casts Fives another sharp look, but Fives counters the look in overdue acknowledgement. 

“Fuck _off,_ Kix,” he says, exasperated. “You’re not involved, stop acting like -”

“He’s not the one who’s unhinged,” Rex interrupts, suddenly desperate. “It’s my fault it progressed to what it was. I appreciate you guys for stepping in, but I have to finish this. I’m sorry, Fives.”

Rex and Fives make eye contact that spears emotional cogency as authentically as a bucket of icy water to the face. The apology is too fast, and the potential significance it holds for the tension between them is too vital for this rushed _‘sorry’_ to be brushed off and redone. Rex watches as the prominent disappointment and indignance within Fives congeal thickly, and he wonders if he has been caught in the most heartbreaking moment of his life. 

Kix and Jesse remain ignorant between the crossfire, however. An irritated scoff snaps Rex and Fives out of it, as unfulfilling as it really is. 

“I wish a time that was actually _appropriate_ had been picked for this,” Kix muses bitterly. “Do whatever you want, I don’t give a shit. You’d had your chance bef -”

“Cut it out,” Jesse says firmly. He allows Fives and Rex a hushed moment in order to determine the next move, but Rex only stands there, awaiting silently. Whatever hanging sentiment Kix had not been able to follow through with, they both feel that he’s right. 

“What were you guys doing coming in here anyway?” Fives asks, and he finally tears his gaze away from Rex’s. There’s no malice in his voice, which would lead Kix and Jesse to believe Fives is inquiring about the progress on site rather than expressing his regret he hadn’t finished beating Rex before being interrupted, but Rex is not surprised. 

“Coming to get you,” Kix replies. “General Skywalker’s calling everyone together, _sir._ ”

They ignore his mocking tone in favor of preparation. Fives has been serving all sorts of blows today, and Rex isn’t sure he can handle much more. 

“Then let’s go,” Fives says, morphing his expression into a blank, unreadable front. Rex feels his heartbeat speed up, feels a sharp breath suck in before halting sharply, as Fives begins to stroll forwards and Jesse follows his lead. “We don’t want to lead a bad example by just not showing up to meetings, right, Captain?”

He stops right in front of Rex, and while the tension that still wrings between them is strong, there’s no threat of physical violence anymore, but Rex can’t seem to shake the anticipation of Fives’s fist swinging up to knock him backwards, like what he deserves. 

If Kix and Jesse exchange worry-filled, conflicted looks, or even eye rolls and shakes of their heads, then Rex notes how oblivious he is to his surroundings in this particular state. “Right,” he chokes out, surprised his knees haven’t withered to flimsy sticks under Fives’s inscrutable stare. 

Fives pushes past Rex to walk out of the tent, and even with the languorous manner he uses to finally shift his feet just enough to even turn around and follow him, Rex doesn’t bother humoring the bewildered looks Kix and Jesse impose upon him. 

The rest of the men stand crowded on one side of a bulky holoprojector table, which has been hauled over on a wheeled cart. Anakin and Ahsoka stand on the other side like usual, with R2 close at their knees. The soft, pliant ground is coated in a murky fog that trickles upwards to everyone’s fingertips, the agent to a moist game that warps one’s vision. There’s only a soft rustle among the troopers as the belated four approach, each having pulled their helmet over their head, but it’s apparent the group has been patiently expectant. When Rex and Fives come to a stop beside the projector, Jesse and Kix at their heels, there’s no sign in their body language that they’re apologetic for being late. Rex instead tries not to let the immensely close proximity of Fives and Ahsoka compress him harshly in the middle, the latter of whom has her arms crossed and is very obviously trying not to latch her perturbed gaze onto Rex’s glossy visual. He can at least be elated he has his helmet, nonetheless. 

“Nice of you to join us, Rex,” Anakin says hesitantly. “Fives. Is everything alright?”

“Yes, General, everything is fine,” Rex says quickly. “Are we getting briefed?”

For a horrifying moment Rex is afraid Anakin will ignore his quick diversion to the task at hand to inquire about whatever incident might have occurred inside the tent - an intrusion that would then indicate, Rex hopes, that whatever business is about to be discussed isn’t of the most crucial caliber - but Anakin swiftly slides his mouth to the opposite corner of his face and turns his narrowed gaze to the projector in front of him. 

“No, this is not a briefing,” Anakin says. Rex nods, more as a way to allow his relief to calm his sizzling blood pressure than to mark his attentiveness to his General. “Just a very rare, informal check-in. Anyways, as you know, we’ve been in anticipation of Senator Katrich’s arrival. It’s our job to make sure the Trade Federation hasn’t bribed some oil stained pirate sleemos to stage a little mishap while the Senator’s here. Because, best case scenario for the Republic, she’s wrenched the cod up their asses during this conference later today. So far, we’ve detected no ships breaching the planet’s atmosphere, but of course, good ol’ Gunray might have a few extra tricks up his sleeve. I want everyone here to continue setting up our own equipment, and to be on the lookout for both Senator Katrich’s escort shuttle and any potential hired pirate craft. If I hear a single complaint, about _boredom,_ you’re welcome to polish the equipment when you finish.” 

The failure to lighten the dreary mood shifting through Torrent Company is more suffocating than the moist air overwhelming everyone’s air ventilators. 

“Why did you mention pirates, sir?” Jesse asks, not bothering to hide his blatantly irritated tone. 

“That’s how Senator Katrich chose to voice her concern. It’s unclear whether she caught wind of an assassination plot to save Gunray’s corrupt ass, or if she’s just so godsdamn confident she’s going to fry them to shriveled dianoga that they’ll _want_ to dispose of her -”

The men squeeze laughter out of themselves, but it’s a willing attempt. No one seems to be in the mood to indulge their General. 

“ - but I guess the word ‘pirate’ got thrown around. That satisfy your question, Jesse?” Anakin asks. 

Jesse grunts. A low mumbling arises from the men as they turn to one another, some crossing their arms and shifting their weight onto one hip to similarly express their haughty attitudes. Anakin rolls his shoulders back and juts his chin out, admittedly more slowly than usual, but all the same, the troopers who notice stiffen with fearful anticipation before someone oblivious suddenly shouts just as Anakin’s lips part to snap:

“Commando missions getting a little tedious, sir?” 

Rex immediately whips his head to the crowd, causing a few troopers nearby to cringe. 

“Yeah, is the 501st the _only_ legion not scoring any front line campaigns?” another trooper adds. 

“Boys,” Rex barks. “Can it. You weren’t sent here to complain about your own _disappointment_ . Show the General some respect and keep your traps _shut,_ for Fett’s sake.” 

He turns back to Anakin. “My apologies, sir. The men have been a little antsy of late, is all.” 

Anakin folds his arms across his chest and raises his brows in what appears to be amusement. “Not an issue, Rex. Well, _yet._ ” 

He shoots the cramped crowd of clones across the holotable his own scornful glare and ignores the frisky snicker that bubbles out from Ahsoka before continuing. “If everyone’s in agreement, I wanted to remark on how Jesse’s inquiry leads into the next important point concerning this lively mission.” Anakin turns to nod at the dumbstruck trooper. “Thank you, Jesse.” 

The way he stands stupidly, with only the blank stare of his bucket for expression, indicates he’s rooted to the spot in slight alarm. It doesn’t help when Jesse receives a not-so-subtle snag to the gauntlet by Kix. 

“That being said, there’s no telling what sort of staged mishap the Trade Federation might pull. We’ll be detecting, scouting, and basically as much as we can without being a threatening Republic presence -”

At that, very audible groans emerge from Torrent Company, whether they have intended on harmoniously being so vocal or not. Rex releases his own frustrated grunt. 

“ _Troopers!_ Put a lid on it right fucking now or it’s three days in a detention block for misconduct.” 

Everyone...oddly shuts their mouths. All eyes look to Anakin, who rolls the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger as a hard exhalation of breath rocks his chest. It’s surprising, to see that his self-administrations actually help to compose him. 

“Do you think I’m thrilled with this sit-still speculation bullshit? This isn't enough to keep _scouts_ on their toes, but I’m not going to protest. Well, y’know, _yet,_ anyway. You know me. But anyways, just let me finish laying the stake-out intricacies to you, for the love of the Force. That sound good?” 

Every attentive trooper stands silent with salvaged obedience. Then: “Wait, hold on - sir?” 

Anakin’s lidded eyes drift above all their heads, his mouth clocked like he’s trying not to grit his teeth as his tone drips with sarcastic disapproval. “Oh, goody. Yes, Fives?” 

“I just want to make it clear, General; this, _Senator Katrich,_ she has no solid intel about an attack on her? She’s just asked for protection?” 

Anakin feigns a smile. “That is correct, Fives.” 

“So….we’re here to ensure her paranoia is kept under check? Whether we dig some plot up or not?”

Anakin pauses, casting the face front of Fives’s helmet an impassive stare. “You’ve hit the mark spot on, just like usual, Fives.”

The finger Fives has pointing down contentiously at the holotable curls back up into his fist. “Holy _kriff,_ sir, where’s the fucking Coruscant guard when you need them?”

“Yeah, why doesn’t she take spies and guards along with her? Why does she need an _attack_ battalion hiding on a humid rock stick?” It sounds like Tup, which is half of the reason the troopers crowded around him outwardly cackle. 

Anakin lets himself slip up a bit, a wide grin splitting his face as he tucks his head down to chuckle lowly into his chest. It gives Rex the time to softly nudge Fives, who shrugs conspicuously in response. 

“You okay there, Master?” Ahsoka asks. 

Anakin picks his head up again and turns to scrunch his face at her. “Snips, you’ve got to be, like, the _only_ one here who’s happy we’re not engaged in combat right now,” he says in a chiding fashion. 

Ahsoka’s facial features widen and expand defensively as she’s accustomed, except now the color in her face flushes a deeper shade of orange. “That’s not true!” she says quickly. “I didn't even fight on Onderon! The Jedi council wouldn’t let me.” 

“The Jedi council is a lot of things,” Anakin says, somehow exhibiting a great hindrance to what sounds like reserved fury from bursting out in his tone. “But ‘particularly efficient’ never seems to be one of them. Anyways! Men! Listen up, because I _refuse_ to repeat myself. I’ve got tasks for all of you here when it comes to surveillance and stealth. However, by the end of this conference, Senator Katrich will be receiving a cargo vessel stacked full of equipment, courtesy of the Trade Federation. I’ll send a grand total of _two_ of you to go and examine the area. Check for traps, _pirates,_ whatever. When you get on board the ship, make sure there’s no set-ups in there that could potentially ruin Katrich’s career, like spice, any other illegal components, bombs, bugs, maybe some _pirates_ are lurking aboard to snap her neck - whatever the case may be, just make sure her lended ship is completely clean. Gunray’s stored it in the bridge city to our left -”

Anakin extends an arm and points somewhere in the distance, inattentive to the fact that the cliffs and their conjoining bridges are completely obscured by the heavy puffs of fog and the bundles of trees that enclose their grassy clearing. None of the clones look to where their General points anyway. 

“- atop the middle rock arch, so whoever goes needs a jetpack to get off this ass-clamper and reach the next rock, before ultimately crossing a very unsturdy bridge,” Anakin finishes, and he lets his arm drop clumsily to his side. He lifts his brows at everyone expectantly, but shakes his head in defeat when the troopers all remain frozen, not an ounce of hope or renewed enthusiasm coursing through them. No one wants to pretend that a long walk to inspect a Senator’s ship for potential booby traps can restore their integrity, when the very basis of their existence is being played off as a joke. Nevertheless, orders are orders, and each of them are humanized representations of following _those_ regardless of its demeaning nature. 

“Maybe if you offer R2 as the ride instead of a jetpack, someone will want to volunteer,” Ahsoka says before Rex can intimidate his men into speaking up. The astromech’s dome head spins left and right, beeping in protest. Ahsoka explodes in a mischievous fit of giggles when she glances down at the droid bumping against her boots. 

Anakin shoots his padawan a glare. “Don't push it, snips,” he mutters. 

Several buckets on the verge of breaking swivel to look at Fives, who actually allows himself to snicker out loud. “How about your lightsaber as well, General? It might be more effective than my blasters when defending myself against those Weequay pirates.”

Ahsoka’s hand slides over her stomach as she loses it. “I have an extra one, boys, if that’ll do the trick.”

The entirety of Torrent Company frizzles with humorous tension as Fives and Ahsoka burst out in laughter, exchanging mocking jests about the droll expedition to cleanse a cargo ship. Rex shakes his head and runs a hand down the front of his helmet. The only thing keeping the others from joining them is the menacing countenance plastered upon the General’s face. 

“Oh, how _swell,_ ” Anakin drawls, rolling his eyes. “Ahsoka, Fives, you just won yourselves the privilege of inspecting the Senator’s ship. Congratulations.” 

Ahsoka’s laughter immediately ceases and she turns to gape wide-eyed at her master. “What? _Me?_ ” she exclaims incredulously.

“And _me?_ ” Fives chirps, his helmet tilted to fix on Anakin like his stare is an incoming wrist rocket. 

“Absolutely, you _both._ The rest of you are dismissed, by the way,” Anakin calls out to the group. Torrent Company immediately diverges, prancing quickly to different areas of their site while murmuring indiscreetly to each other. “Snips and Fives, we just have a few more things to go over.”

Rex and Fives remove their helmets and exchange glances, just about the only clones left with the General and Commander. “Are you sure there’s nothing you want me to do back here?” Ahsoka whines through grit teeth. “Sure you won’t miss me? Aren’t I your best asset on hand?”

A peel of laughter escapes Anakin’s wide grin. “I think R2 outranks you in that sense, Ahsoka,” he says. Ahsoka huffs, a smirk tugging at the corners of her mouth. 

“Well, then. I’m happy to get away, anyways - I’m not sure how I was going to last having to put up with you for hours on end,” she remarks. 

“I like your enthusiasm.” Anakin winks at his padawan before turning to the two clones who have moved little ways around the holotable to face their General, standing shoulder to shoulder with their helmets tucked under the crooks of their elbows. Anakin suddenly frowns at Rex.

“Is something wrong, Captain?” he asks. 

“Uh, no, sir,” Rex says, slowly. “Was there, um, anything else you needed from me?”

Without the regulations of strict command structure, the ones in particular that keep Rex’s shoulders pushed back and his chin lifted straight in front of him, the seeds of twitchiness in his nerves that bloom throughout his body would not be subtle. Fives is much better composed, but it seems to be the energy fanning off of Rex that perturbs him as he keeps a serious gaze fixed anywhere but on Rex _or_ Ahsoka. 

_Ahsoka_ ….well, she just doesn’t know how to fit into this awkward equation. She figures that pressing closer to her Master’s side while squeezing her upper arms probably contributes nothing helpful; however, she’s still convinced it's her nagging disquiet over Rex’s well-being that makes her stare bug-eyed up at the two. 

“Just oversee the other men, Rex,” Anakin says. “Make sure my standards - or, the standards of the mission, more like - are met. I don’t want expensive equipment damaged, or anything like that. But that’s all.” 

Rex nods. In a strange manner he turns to leave, but not before casting his head a tad bit over his shoulder while shifting his grip on his helmet in his hands. Anakin notices the hesitation and smirks a bit. “Don’t worry about these two, Rex, they’re not in _too_ much trouble. I’ll go as easy on them as I can,” he says lightly. 

Rex’s movements speed more hastily when he makes eye contact with Anakin. “Right,” he says, and quickly walks away. 

Anakin looks back to Ahsoka and Fives with an odd look and a shake of his head. “Wonder what’s up with Rex today, eh?”

Ahsoka blinks rapidly, her expression as solemn as Fives, who refrains from peering up from the tips of his boots. They refuse to look at one another. 

Anakin brushes off the weird atmosphere coagulating around them in favor of relaying the details of their spy-like run, oblivious himself anyway.


	2. Part One - Continued

It becomes quickly apparent that Anakin is in the interest of stalling for as long as he can. There isn’t much to relay to his padawan and cardinal ARC trooper concerning a vessel inspection clearing, besides the obvious factor that he expects a report and comm updates. After finally throwing her master off their backs, and asserting her sentiment about feeling no pity towards his impending state of boredom for the next few hours, Ahsoka isn’t sure if she’d rather coop herself up like before, scrolling through her datapad, or keep herself busy with mild exercise and the decrypting of a ship. 

“I’m not bringing a jetpack,” Ahsoka states dryly, crinkling her nose, after she and Fives make their way over to the roped-off area between the 501st’s gunships. Their departure from Anakin together hadn’t been uncomfortable, no, they were too disciplined for that, but it was rather weighty with the residue of both of their private conversations with Rex. They have a long walk alone ahead of them, they know, so it’s too early to necessarily uncover the quandary at hand. 

Fives proceeds to lift the heavy device without too much of a grunt before securing it behind him on his fastened back plate. “I may as well just launch myself to the canyon the ship’s _on,_ without making all those stops along the way,” Fives mutters. “Walking miles through forests and then crossing bridges? The hell’s the jetpack for then?”

Ahsoka hasn’t been exposed to the exclusive ARC trooper environment too many times, but Fives is a special case nonetheless. She suddenly feels so small, while she allows her eyes to intently explore the way in which his gloved hand slides over his neck, thick with tendons and slicey muscle, the sharp angle of his jawline jerking with vigor and ease, all at the same time. She hasn’t seen many troopers who prefer to grow facial hair - most of them can’t go a single campaign without shaving the hair off their head - but Fives’s goatee flicks up his chin coarse and rough, and she finds she rather likes the look. “It’s useful that we’re subtle for as long as possible,” she says. “Even if that means taking the longer route.”

“You’re the boss, Commander,” Fives says. “Is it a force-jump that’ll get you off this rock?”

Ahsoka has to pause and think. “I’m not sure. I usually just rely on the force, when it comes down to it. In all honesty I don’t know what kind of jump I’m looking at.”

Fives snorts. “I wish I had a form of supernatural abilities I could just rely on whenever it was needed. Trust me, I’d ditch the JT-12, I really would.” When they finally make direct eye contact, Ahsoka gives him a cheery smile. 

“Then I guess the worst case scenario is we have to share the jetpack,” she says, and the mischievous arch in her brows brings her that familiar tingle all on its own accord. 

Fives blinks. “ _Share_ it? The hell - what, like, you go first and then force it back across the arch? Not that bad of an idea, I guess.”

Ahsoka musters out a mangled laugh. “Uh, no, that’s….that’s not what I meant.”

They depart from the lethargic clearing without drawing attention, walking side by side, and both rather taciturn about speech. With Ahsoka’s senses, she can feel the forest they soon find themselves enveloped in thrumming with life, like how strong bark limbs tangle with one another above, while the voluptuous mass of thick vines and all sorts of odd greenery clinging off of them allow only for a few dots of light to seep through and shine down on the path beneath, but the measure of how far they have to walk before they reach the drop of the canyon is still indeterminate. Ahsoka inhales deeply, calming her hyper system, dwelling on the various smells to be intook, some musky with the wet dirt at her feet, others sweet with the foreign plants springing at the bases of the tree trunks. Ahsoka feels the still air about them, strung with the planet’s damp moisture, settle on all the exposed parts of her skin and mix with the dried sweat that had gathered while she was under the tent. 

She suddenly realizes, after a little while, that the site is well behind them, concealed from sight and no longer a threat to the peaceful quiet of the forest. Well, for the most part; there’s always that consistent buzzing, composed of unidentified bugs and lurking critters alike, with the occasional rustle of the leaves or some sporadic clicking noise. 

The war hasn’t allowed Ahsoka to explore too many relationship dynamics between herself and those who comprise her life, and she doesn’t doubt it has robbed her of the appearances of other persons she’d have otherwise met, but she supposes the force shapes her life and controls who it is she ends up meeting for a reason. It is what it is. However, past the professionalism and the stark command structure that has determined the nature of most of her relationships, Ahsoka longs to explore what _could be,_ how she and the people she knows could be different.

She’s reminded of this because although she and Fives remain uncommunicative for as long as they deem necessary, it isn’t an awkward or uncomfortable silence. When Ahsoka allows herself to reach out in the force, she feels only a relaxed and content state off of Fives. She admires him for it, and she admires how he’s someone who can feel so at ease without making small talk or addressing anything specific with her. Ahsoka has always disliked a jittery nature off of a person, the type of people who could not sit still around her in silence without making the environment vexatious. She figures she’s encountered someone a bit more relatable to her wavelength within the force, and rather special, when they can walk with her in absolute, comfortable silence. Ahsoka latches onto Fives’s current energy in hopes of easing her own mind away from the aggravating anticipation of what their all-too-soon conversation may entail. 

She’s surprised when Fives cuts through the silence first.

“I can’t believe how used to this armor I am. It’s humid as all hell out here, and I _should_ want to bag this shit off of me, but it’s not even uncomfortable for me at this point. It’s like, you wear armor in all sorts of environments and soon enough it’s like your own skin,” he says. When Ahsoka glances over to the man walking beside her, Fives is examining the arms he rotates out in front of him in abhorrence. An indication to her, at least, that he can’t give less of a shit about his armor, and is rather trying to warm them both up to conversation. 

Ahsoka unintentionally takes a deeper turn. “I imagine that’s what it’s like for all aspects of the war,” she blurts, before she can catch herself. 

“What do you mean?” Fives asks slowly. 

“None of us should _want_ to constantly fight, or kill, or long for war,” Ahsoka begins. She hopes that focusing on the steady rate of her swift feet will help settle the pace of her fortuitous speech. “But, I don’t know. I think it would be stupid to ignore the fact that we’ve all reached the point where we’ve accepted it. You saw how Anakin and the men were back there just now; we _love_ to fight. This is just - our way of life.”

Fives and Ahsoka find it easier to proceed transfixed down their path, without making an effort to cast sidelong looks at one another. “We have to be comfortable with it,” Ahsoka hears Fives say from beside her. 

Ahsoka’s grateful he feeds into her particularly grim topic of discussion, without rushing them or rejecting her chosen route. She feels herself nod. “Yeah.”

“Sir?” Fives asks, and they both cringe at how forced the address sounds. “Do I have permission to speak out of line?”

“Should you be speaking at all if it’s going to be out of line?” Ahsoka teases.

Fives pauses. “No, Commander,” he agrees suddenly. “Yeah, just forget it.”

“I was joking, Fives,” Ahsoka says quickly, with a light huff that sounds like it should have been a laugh if she hadn’t been so taken aback. 

“I know, Commander, but forget it anyways. I shouldn’t - I don’t want to talk a bit too openly if you won’t be comfortable with it,” Fives mumbles dismissively. 

Ahsoka feels her body tense, realizing suddenly his attempt to draw them into the topic concerning what currently sits between them as a rather ambivalent strain. Looking past the agonizing fret she associates with thoughts of her and Rex’s interaction from before, not to mention the possibility of addressing it, Ahsoka finds she _does_ want to hear Fives talk openly around her. She experiences a strange notion throbbing in the back of her subconscious that longs for the chance to appear amicably in Fives’s perception of her; which is, regretfully, motivation enough for her.

“Well, the way I see it, we’re stuck alone together for a good _five_ standard hours,” Ahsoka says as lightheartedly as she can. “We can do and say whatever we want and we can’t get caught for it.”

The latent implications behind Ahsoka’s rather abrupt observance hangs between them for far too long. While a blush prickles indecisively along her cheeks, Fives produces a choked snort. 

“Right,” he says. “That’s technically _true._ Well, sir -”

“It’s Ahsoka, Fives,” Ahsoka says persistently.

“What?”

“What did I just say about acting however we want because we’re literally isolated smack dab in a random ass forest? You can drop all formalities. I’m ordering it,” she declares stoutly. Ahsoka turns to cast a sidelong glance at Fives, her brows swooped conspicuously. He seems to have been already looking down at her; there is spotty evidence of wary uncertainty behind his dark eyes, but the shift in his jaw and the twitch at the corners of his lips promise relaxed fondness.

“Uh - well, technically you can’t order me to do anything if I adopt the mentality that regulations can’t touch us out here,” Fives offers. 

“There you go.”

“So, _Ahsoka_ \- I guess there’s no going back - I meant about _Rex._ ”

“Ah.” Ahsoka hadn’t known exactly how Fives would approach the subject weighing down so obviously between them, but she wouldn’t have been prepared either way. The cold sense of dread invades the core of her chest and affects several operating systems within her. “Okay.” She suddenly pauses. “You….you had a fight with him, didn’t you?”

Fives sighs loudly over the sudden sporadic tweeting of some winged creatures skulking in the foliage above. “Yeah, we fought. It was - a painful conversation to have, if you could even call it that. It wasn’t that civil.”

“What do you mean?”

A pending croak leaks from Fives’s hesitant mouth. “Well, by the end of it, Kix and Jesse came out of nowhere, _thankfully,_ to intervene -”

“What the fuck?” Ahsoka hisses hysterically. She grinds her feet into the pudgy dirt and comes to a halt, spinning on her heels to face Fives. “You mean it got _physical?_ ”

“Just a little bit, yeah,” Fives admits, cringing his face in cautious guilt as Ahsoka gapes up at him in disbelief. Fives continues defensively. “But you saw us at the briefing, and with General Skywalker. I don’t doubt we’ll be able to talk it through soon enough -”

“Fives!”

“What? It wasn’t my fault!” Ahsoka has trouble buying that. Her face falls, her fixed glare softening and dropping somewhere other than Fives’s gaze. A hand instinctively slides to the back of his neck, scratching and scraping mindlessly at the slicked hairs there as he watches Ahsoka’s arms fold tightly over her chest. “Well, _completely._ Rex was being a fucking _di’kut_ to me. He doesn’t usually act how he just did with me for no reason, Ahsoka, this was _weird,_ ” Fives continues strongly. “I’ve never seen him act that way before, but it was not right. Something with him is off right now.”

Ahsoka doesn’t miss the speculative nature of Fives’s tone, like he’s already made a conjecture about why something may be off with Rex. She snaps her head back up to look at Fives, a renewed wild tinge in her eyes, along with an expressive emotion upon her face that seems to be the product of a similar conflict flooding through her insides. _Guilt?_ “So what, Fives?” Ahsoka exclaims with hurt. “You know better than to use that as an excuse to get angry and _punch_ him -”

“Woah, woah, it wasn’t like that at all,” Fives snaps, as gently and reassuringly as possible. His hands waver between them as a defense. “If I’m being honest, Commander, I think you know as well as I do that this, _mood_ of his, is because of whatever you and him talked about before I got there.”

He’s a bit more assertive in the way he speaks, his mouth thinning in a tight line, confirming in Ahsoka’s head that Fives is more aware of the situation at hand than she’d like him to be. Ahsoka turns from him and marches forward. “You shouldn’t feel the way you do about Rex,” she says weakly. 

“I think you’re missing the point here,” Fives says, sighing exasperatedly as he moves to catch up with her. 

“Am I?” Ahsoka comes to another stop, jerking sharply again to face him. “I know you blame me for leaving Rex off on a bad note before you decided to rail him right after.”

Fives studies her, how her body coils with unfounded rage, the guilt now apparent as it seeps into her features. “Ahsoka - _no,_ ” he states firmly. There are so many layers to this issue that Ahsoka refuses to see and validate. “There’s no one to blame here, except Rex. That is my point. He should have handled his conversation with you differently, than to take it out on me the way he did. I had a serious issue with him to discuss and he couldn’t pull himself together enough to be my Captain, or any of the mens’ Captain, for two fucking seconds.”

“No, Fives, don’t blame him for anything. Rex is not in the wrong here, he can’t be,” Ahsoka says, her tone more desperate than she’d meant it to be. She hadn’t even intended to say that last part, and only when it leaves her mouth is she made aware of the immense doubt fighting its way through the thick wall of guilt she feels. She wants to be clear-minded here, she wants to say and portray all the right things that the moment requires; Ahsoka can’t handle being deemed as pathetic, as the Jedi who avoids truths in favor of persuading herself what makes her more comfortable. The pitiful look Fives gives her incites both an infestation of rage and disappointment in herself, and the desperate need to straighten out the direction she has taken in regards to Rex and the relation to Fives. The blow of the truth is not going to be an easy one, though. 

“I’m not - I’m not saying he should have taken anything out on you, no, that’s wrong. You don’t deserve that,” Ahsoka breathes through a whirling manifestation of undeserved strength. “I’m not even saying I know what happened between you guys or what the conversation was about, but I _am_ saying that I know what happened between me and him. You can’t blame Rex, for _anything._ ” Her previous accusation flits back to her in a second, and she wonders why she’d wanted to ignore that pulsating fact for the sake of succumbing to Fives’s bunker of reality. It suddenly dawns on her, accompanied by a shameful rush of churning heat in both her stomach and face, that maybe it has something to do with the way she’s subconsciously noticed how broad his shoulders are beneath his double pauldron, how they nicely frame a wide chest that slinks down into a solid frame, twisting expertly under the plackart. Or the dark blue stripes painted down his torso, complimenting as a rugged glamor to the dark sweep of Fives’s hair, curling up and sticking and - 

“Why are you defending him?” Fives inquires indignantly. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Ahsoka.”

Ahsoka has no time to reprimand herself for ogling at how well his armor suits his body; his comment has suddenly thrown her awry. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Ahsoka, look. I tried my best to have as much pity as possible for Rex. He’s always meant so much to me, you know? We’ve always been close, as brothers, but after -”

“Don’t talk about any of that just yet, Fives. You think I’m standing up for Rex because I feel guilty, or something. Why would you think that?” Ahsoka’s tone doesn’t quite reach the level of authoritative demand she’d been wishing for. Her hands clench into fists at the hem of her tunic, and she keeps her face as even as possible as she and Fives hold eye contact. She has half a mind to release her emotion on him, as she’s trying to do, but she’s wrong and she knows it. It’s the reason why she submits to whatever result Fives’s appraisal of their current conversation will entail, and not because of the way his kind eyes narrow at her with only the slightest hesitation, in an establishment of his transient authority.

“Come on, Ahsoka. Do you want to hear my side of it, or not?” he says, a small press of urgency marking his tone. 

Ahsoka averts her gaze for only a moment, and allows herself to inhale steadily. She knows fighting back at this point would be futile - she’s already accepted Fives’s appointed direction of the argument - so she uncurls her fists and lets herself relax. “What did you want to talk with Rex about, Fives?” she asks softly. 

Fives doesn’t hesitate. “Umbara.”

Ahsoka’s face falls. “Oh.” 

“Yeah...” Fives says awkwardly. His brows pinch and his mouth widens into a smile when Ahsoka just stands there, trying to process a potential correlation. She knows her stunned reaction isn’t at all helpful, but she can’t bring herself to match Fives’s nearly-amused attitude. She really just wants to let him talk. 

“I know we’ve been trained to let things go, like, immediately, and move forward,” Fives begins, sounding as if he’s roughly deliberating his thoughts. “And, I mean, it’s for the best. It really is. It’s helpful that we’ve been trained to keep our focus and have a straightforward mindset when coping with the war. Since this is our predetermined life, it’s the least we could know how to do, y’know? But after everything that happened on Umbara, I guess it being so _different_ than any other horrific thing we’ve experienced….there are effects from it that are still - _haunting_ the men.”

Ahsoka realizes they’re standing still, and the reason they’re in a forest in the first place is to complete a mission. Fives continues to talk, speaking truthfully and with heartfelt emotion, as Ahsoka gently puts a hand on his arm gauntlet to indicate their movement should proceed forward through the tangle of suspended trunks and vines while they speak. They fall into a walking rhythm side by side soon enough. 

“It’s hard to determine exactly what to _do_ for the men, afterwards. Our General wanted to fucking eliminate all of us. We shot at the two-twelfth like they were droids. Shit like that - it’s honestly not even the half of it, but. A lot of it was Rex. He was too late to save his men, he was so - so caught up in following rules and being a good Captain that in the end, it made him completely negligent to do anything _actually_ useful. Rex totally played into this ploy and essentially made it thrive, got men killed, listened to the general. I don’t wanna sound….I don’t know, it’s just that I - I basically _uncovered_ that ploy, if you will, and Rex refused to listen to me when I strayed from the chain of command in order to do the right thing. And I forgave him after that. I told him I understood his position, but when we got back to Coruscant, it finally kinda hit me, and I think it hit him too. I think after I had time to think about it, I got angry with myself for being so forgiving. I wanted Rex to act the way I thought the Captain should act, especially after what we all went through.”

Ahsoka remembers when Anakin sat down with her, privately, to evaluate the reports of the Umbara campaign. She hadn’t known much about what had happened, except that it was dire enough to require a Jedi Council meeting, and she had been horrified to initially be informed that the general commanding their 501st boys for the campaign had died; no, been _killed._ Fives halts his speech, either from a burst of overwhelming emotion or because he needs a moment to think, Ahsoka isn’t sure. She balances the breath coursing through her nose and lungs in preparation to respond, wondering how much of her truly wants to keep at defending Rex. “It sounds like Rex didn’t know how to react to a situation where he needed to think outside the box a bit,” she says. 

“No, that’s exactly what it was,” Fives confirms. “Rex was so torn over whether to be some submissive servant-boy soldier, the way a man _can_ be with someone like General Skywalker, or if he should actually take matters into his own hands. And I’m not trying to shit on him _that_ fucking hard, I mean, I can’t lie and say I had been the captain. But, I mean; I know what I would’ve done _as captain,_ and personally I think I have the right to say that because of the action I took. Rex still didn’t handle his position of leadership well, though, because I was right at his six the whole time, pushing and pushing at him to just fucking do _something._ There are several factors that should’ve made him budge, not just me and all the wild shit I decided to do. But then it was too late, and before you know it Dogma’s giving the signal for the firing squad to shoot Jesse and me dead.”

Ahsoka casts a sidelong look at Fives, the lines around her mouth and eyes etched with solemn grim. “And you….still feel guilty? About everything awful that happened?”

Fives inhales a shaky breath, his jaw shifting, his voice soft and quiet. “Of course I do.”

“I think you and the men all have a right to feel the way you do,” Ahsoka says, flowing with sympathy. “I just can’t imagine Rex making so many mistakes when it’s the lives of his men at risk….”

Fives’s eyelids flutter slightly, and his chest slumps in defeat. “Well, that’s what I thought, too. But, no - I shouldn’t be angry, not with my Captain. I shouldn’t have taken it out on him today, I should’ve been more understanding. Sorry, Commander, it’s -”

“Fives.” They don’t cease their progression forward, even as Ahsoka twists to instinctively place her hand on the cool surface of his plated arm. She can feel a mixture of guilt and regret weighing him down heavily, a stark contrast to the easy confidence he’d been bearing for the majority of their time together. “It’s okay to be angry. You have a valid side of the story, and so does Rex. Just through circumstance, though, I wasn’t - there, on Umbara, myself. Don’t - don’t beat yourself up about handling it the way you did. You’ve all been suffering so much with this, I can’t even….”

Ahsoka trails off at the ache that suddenly seizes her heart, and she lets her hand fall from Fives’s arm. He watches her, studying carefully. Patches of murky sunlight that fall in from spaces up above illuminate the dark blue of Ahsoka’s montrals, spilling over her orange and white skin as they pass through them and making her seem like the most brilliant array of colors in the forest.

“I feel like I shouldn’t be talking to you about this,” Fives suddenly admits. He still eyes Ahsoka as she cradles the back of one hand in the other, her fingers flexing. “Any of this. When have you ever heard that a clone talks about his…. _feelings_ to a CO? Shit, I mean, it must add another level of ‘subservient’ by the fact it's the Jedi I’m choosing to confide in.”

Ahsoka lifts her head and scoffs. “I guess it’s rare, but I mean....in _my_ opinion it takes strength to confess something personal, _especially_ to someone who’s meant to be a superior officer. I’m not all that surprised _you’re_ the one vulnerable enough to have a….deep conversation with me. It’s refreshing, honestly.” Ahsoka turns to meet his gaze, and they exchange warm smiles that still end up being more reserved than she’d liked. 

“And I know you and I haven’t really talked before, Fives, but you can tell me anything,” Ahsoka decides to rush out. She feels as if there’s a cable locked between them as she settles into his lighter, less tense energy than when he’d just been talking of Umbara. 

Fives grins wide at that, a doubtful quirk in his brows. “Anything I want?”

Ahsoka shrugs. “Sure. I just mean you shouldn’t have to hesitate when talking about how you feel.” She really hopes she isn’t crossing any lines. It’s a part of her nature to confess things in a straightforward, honest manner; a quality Ahsoka has learned needs to be kept more in check, at certain times. But she still can’t shake the feeling that this - locked cable, straining between them, lodges from her body at the core of her heart. “Saying stuff like that aloud can help, right? I can be the person you….talk to. If you want. When you need it.”

“Well. I guess talking is better than aggressively expressing myself,” Fives says glumly. “But I’m also not a charity case, Commander.”

Ahsoka quickly turns to him, heat flighting from her chest and into her face from a mix between a bout of panic and rue. “I’m not saying that. I don’t think that at all.” Without bothering to check if Fives has a change of heart through the force, Ahsoka waits for her heart to sizzle down before she decides to press on. “I won’t ever judge you, is what I mean. But it’s always your choice.”

Ahsoka doesn’t let herself think anything of it when Fives refrains from answering. His bashfulness becomes justified within the force, anyways, as Ahsoka takes the time to reconnect with him again. Fives is subversive, and sometimes stoic, but he confirms his willing compliance to Ahsoka’s brush of demure endearment to him in his own fitting way.

“I’m not going to talk any more about Umbara,” Fives says, firmly, yet quietly. “Sometimes it’s just….easier not to think about.”

“That’s fine.” Ahsoka still doesn’t feel like she’s procured the proper contrition from their earlier squabble, so she glances at him swiftly before intaking a sharp breath.

“I think it was just some really bad timing,” she says matter-of-factly.

“What was?”

“You obviously had a lot on your mind, back at the tent, and you wanted to deal with it in the moment. I get that, wanting to get something over and done with, _immediately,_ so you can move on and have the answers already. But you were right. Rex was upset after I talked with him, which is when you happened to stop by, and….he wasn’t exactly prepared to talk to you about his incompetence. I’m sorry about that,” she admits tentatively. 

Fives shakes his head. “You don’t have to apologize for that, Ahsoka. Like I said, it’s not your fault. Well -” He pauses, his tongue caught as he suddenly realizes he had meant that particular statement to correlate with an _alternate_ factor. Something Ahsoka has picked up on, and figures his mistake as much as he’s letting on to it. When she refuses to acknowledge it in full, silent to listen to him, Fives picks up with his usual muster. “- for this too, I guess, it’s _also_ not your fault. Anyway, I was just so - so frustrated, at myself, at Umbara, at Rex. And when he couldn’t even fucking _talk_ to me properly, I don’t know, it made me more frustrated at the fact that he wasn’t listening. But we’ll talk some other time, we’ll work through it. Rex and I usually do.”

“I know everything will be okay.” This time, when they both turn to look at one another, there’s no shared smile; but the conjoined eye contact they make flurries with ten times more of a warm, heartfelt understanding than the smiles they’d exchanged before. Fives passes through a patch of light cast upon the dirt, and it coats his bronze skin and brings about a honey-colored glow to his eyes. Combined with the blue paint of his armor, Fives looks to her like a blossoming kibo amid a swarm of grenade fungi. Ahsoka feels her heart lurch uncontrollably, pounding with an unmistakable intensity. 

It isn’t long before they make out the drop of the canyon. The fog grows thicker near the edge, crawling its way down at their feet and spreading all about the foliage. After maneuvering through a strange obstacle of blue-tinted brush, fanning the distorting fog from their faces, Ahsoka and Fives halt at the curve, where the humid cloud diverges, revealing the dark gray skin and the expanse of oceans beyond. 

“Well, here we are,” Fives comments.

It’s a long fall downwards, which Ahsoka only feels slightly wary about, but the long rock arch that stands out before them looms domineeringly. The jagged mass of rock that makes up its base is topped with a similar mop of jungle and fog to the one they’re currently in the middle of. The green and hazy tangle of loops and protruding forest at the top is raised so far up, Ahsoka and Fives crane their necks backwards to gaze up at where they need to cross. _Well, that’s why there’s no damn bridge here,_ Ahsoka thinks glumly. _It’d be like a fucking staircase._

“Can you make the jump, Commander?” Fives asks sarcastically.

“Bet I could if I _tried,_ ” Ahsoka says mock-defensively. “But, like hell I’m gonna do it.”

“Alright. You going first?” It’s more of a supplemental question, as Fives moves to detach the jetpack latched to his back. Ahsoka snatches his wrist to stop him, and when he spins around to look wide-eyed at her, she can’t help but grin broadly. 

“You mind if I catch a ride with you?” The question lurks between them, and luckily for Ahsoka, not as heavily as the thick fog floating about the air. Ahsoka bites her lip as she watches the realization of her idea dawn over Fives’s face. 

“Oh,” he states. He turns his body more fully towards her as if testing their options to make it happen. “You mean like -”

“Yeah,” Ahsoka says quickly. She suddenly steps up to Fives in a way he’s not prepared for; Ahsoka tosses her arms around his shoulders and presses close to his side, the tips of her toes hardly dragging across his planted feet as a result. “This is okay with you, right? It’s just us, so….” It baffles Ahsoka that she has _actually_ thrown herself on him, because she’s so close to Fives that they can’t look directly at one another, their cheeks nearly brushing as they’re forced to stare over one another’s shoulders. 

“Hey, I have no objections,” Fives says with a small laugh. The startlement doesn’t quite wear off of him, as his upper body leans back and his hands move slowly and mindlessly out in front of him. The boldness of Ahsoka’s actions doesn’t quite process in her own head, either, as she holds onto him tighter, and their proximity manages to send heat flushing through her. 

“Glad to hear it.”

Fives inclines his head for a moment, his every jerk tugging Ahsoka along with him, before his helmet suddenly appears and seals down over his head, obscuring his face from view. Then, without warning, Fives’s legs shuffle against her as he gains a bit of momentum off the shrub-heavy cliff before the pressure of the jetpack lurches them through the air with a loud scream. 

It’s a relatively short ride upwards, as was to be expected, and surprisingly not as awkward as Ahsoka previously anticipated. Her upper arm digs under the helm of Fives’s helmet, right where the ventilator is, wrapped around him so tightly that even the loopy feeling gnawing at her stomach is given a small flicker of reassurance that she may not fall. There’s nothing much to distract her as they rapidly ascend, because the fog is so thick she can’t even watch the mass of forest they’d left behind Anakin and the others in shrink in her line of sight, and she has no intention of prying into Fives’s force signature to discover how quickly his heart may be beating, and why. 

Instead, Ahsoka focuses on the noise. All around them is a combination of a strong rush of sound, from the wispy wind to the roar of the jetpack. She’s pretty sure Fives mumbles something every so often, perhaps even yells it, but even though she purposefully rests her headtail on the side of his helmet, and her other one smushes against his pauldron, she’d never have heard him. 

There’s a single moment, however, when Ahsoka is positive she’ll fall, that she’ll suddenly melt against Fives and slip down to his feet before sailing to the ocean below; the arm she’s tucked against, as much as she can be, tentatively wraps around her middle, enclosing around her until his gloved hand is pressing against the bare skin of her back. Ahsoka’s heart threatens to skip several beats at once so intensely that she suddenly becomes immune to the cold biting harshly at her skin. She worries for a split second that Fives’s cautionary ministration might steer the jetpack’s path off balance, but she’s quick to wholeheartedly trust him, and only the gods know what he may have gone through for ARC training. 

It lasts only a few more seconds until the gush of air and pressure calms into a wavering levitation, and spiky green foliage pokes its way into the corners of Ahsoka’s vision. Fives’s feet hit solid ground just as the jetpack silences with deactivation, and Ahsoka feels a strange high of exhilaration flood through her at the prospect of being stabilized again when Fives lowers her from his shoulders and onto the soles of her own feet. 

Ahsoka watches, pliant from a weird trance the dizzying aerial ride up had put her in, as Fives swiftly removes his helmet, his face pinker and more flushed than when he’d pulled it on. He grins at her. “There you are, ma’am,” he jokes. “One successful ride over an acid-spitting canyon for your pleasure.”

Despite the regret she feels over the loss of contact, Ahsoka beams up at him. “Thanks for that.” 

Fives holds up a forearm and points to the coordinates to the Senator’s vessel that Anakin had logged into his suit system. “The bridge to the next arch isn’t that far from here. But it’s a longer walk to the clearing once we’ve actually made it across,” he says. Ahsoka nods in confirmation before they turn to set off again, through the jumble of overarching and thick shrubbery. She can’t help but feel a certain degree of elated at the prospect of walking a few more miles completely alone with Fives. The idea that they’ll have a second journey coming back, with an equal amount of time and distance, instills a sentiment of hope within Ahsoka, without knowing at all what she may be hopeful _for._ It’s extraordinarily ridiculous. 

There’s only silence between them for a few moments as they trudge through the new jungle. But like before, it’s comfortable.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever told you how good your beard looks on you.”

Ahsoka’s instincts scream at her to take it back, to find a colorful plant somewhere in the jungle that her natural colors will blend in with; but she’s a bit fed up with her lack of experience in exercising social skills, so if it takes a few embarrassing moments of an ARC trooper fumbling at her side, his brows arched high while he casts stunned sidelong looks at her, all in order for Ahsoka to properly learn, then she’ll have to put up with it. 

“ _Sir,_ ” Fives says, but he draws his voice out as he regains himself, and his typical cockiness flicks the corners of his lips up in a smirk. “Do you mean the goatee?”

Ahsoka feels herself internally deflate. Once again he’s seized all control of the finesse she hadn’t had a _chance_ of exhibiting among any of their interactions. “My gods, Fives, it’s _Ahsoka,_ ” she groans. “And, uh, yes? Is that what it’s called?”

She watches him, all the same, as his hand reaches up to scratch at the facial hair running down his chin. “Sorry, _Ahsoka._ The style is called a goatee. But no, you’ve never let me know.”

“What?”

“You’ve never told me it’s looked good before,” Fives says. The fixed stare he gives her, combined with the expressive movement around his mouth, gives him an air of expertise and for some reason _gallantry_ that Ahsoka envies. They do look very good on him, though. 

“Oh,” she says dumbly. 

“Is there anything else you think looks good on me?” 

Ahsoka hears herself splutter before she can stop it. Is he - flirting _back_ with her? She’s smart enough to be aware of Fives’s personality in _general,_ which has been deemed flirtatious at times in the past, and the last mistake Ahsoka intends on making is to take something personally when in fact there’s no direct mutuality. But his voice had been so - she can’t even describe it. Fives sounds deep, with a raw quality that seems to beckon at something hot and jumpy within her. Ahsoka quickly avoids unleashing her instinct to get snappy with him with such an implacable force that her self-criticism dies a brisk death. 

Fives watches her reaction, doused in his alluring haze. Ahsoka suddenly lets her eyes flash hungrily to his chest area. “The armor,” she muses. “I like its blue color. Reminds me of my lekku. How I can use them to hunt for prey.”

Ahsoka’s reminded of just how deviantly _inciting_ this is for her, how fermenting the sheer novelty of this is, as her heart shudders and her appendages threaten to tremble at both the itch to fucking _touch_ the man so close to her and the simple prospect that Fives is wholly engrossed with her, a mere dilettante to this, and countering as smoothly as if he’s had the intricacies to this partaking played out in his head beforehand. Whatever sparks of pure interest Ahsoka can feel flooding off of Fives, she wants to _drown_ in it. 

If he’s at all unsuspecting of her congruent response, he adapts well and proceeds with his chances. “Funny how that color scheme worked out, huh?”

“I guess that makes the five-oh-first boys predators, too,” Ahsoka says, wondering if she should make any modifications to her voice.

“I don’t know about that. In a galaxy with so much _diverse_ shit, boring-ass humans kind of get the middle ground, I’ve noticed,” Fives says matter-of-factly. Ahsoka likes the tight, harmonious formation of his shiny white teeth, which seem to be a prominent factor of his face during this quippy, preliminary conversation. “We need weapons if we want to be predators, especially with vicious little Togs like you running around.”

Ahsoka drinks in the overwhelming smooth tone of his voice. “Well, you’re pretty equipped with _those,_ all things considered.”

“Ah, right, the deece. Clones are equipped with blasters, all right.” Fives tilts his head in thought. “Nice ones, too,” he adds, before looking at Ahsoka with a dangerous gleam in his eyes, lined with unmistakable covet. “How’s that, Ahsoka? Do the _blasters_ give us a pass as predators?”

Ahsoka’s gut twists as she sucks in a breath. She’s desperate to prove, in this seemingly pivotal moment, that she’s more than a naive teenager rattled with horny cravings - to Fives _and_ to herself, since that’s all she’s seen in herself for the past few weeks - through some kind of innuendo, to at least instill the notion she’s not completely inexperienced. “Kind of makes me want to know how to handle those blasters myself,” she says, as aloof as possible without allowing her voice to quaver. “Maybe one of you can show me how to get my own paint job. I’ve always been marked with the same old stripes.”

The heat that flames within both Ahsoka and Fives licks out past the tangible boundary and burns hotly between them. “Yeah,” Fives nearly croaks, his voice breathy and his brows raised in surprise. “Oh, you can get some new stripes, all right.” Ahsoka wants to laugh at how much of a stretch she’s made, but there’s nothing for her to regret with how Fives is looking at her, with how his body inclines towards her like he’s all coiled beneath that grimy armor, while they stumble along through the dirt. “ _But,_ hey - I’ve always wanted to know - do your headtails hurt if they get pulled on? I feel like you’re the type who’s more pain-resistant than most.”

She reckons Fives had wanted to propose his own innuendo while they’re still on the topic of the 501st’s association to her blue headtail stripes. It makes her swell with glee to think that she’s thrown a notorious smooth-talker off enough to make his diversion not-so subtle. “Not sure. I’ve never been worried about it, though,” Ahsoka answers honestly, still unsure as to what exactly he could be getting at. “I can’t think of too many positions I’d be in where my tails are getting snagged on.”

“I can.” The response is immediate, and Ahsoka realizes the gravity of what Fives has just allowed himself to say as her eyes snap wide. 

He’s unfazed by his own daring. They continue to walk along, their gazes locked, while Ahsoka’s initial reaction simmers away until they’re both exchanging wanton smiles. Even as Ahsoka’s heartbeat races with intensity, her senses all too aware of Fives’s charming radiation, she takes a moment to revel in the exuberance of this unexpected experience. It’s thrilling, and pokes at the primal ache in her core that has recently stirred to life with want. It feels so right, so natural that Ahsoka refuses to let herself ponder even briefly over the rather adventitious opportunity that has unfolded before her; it should be bizarre that she’s stooped to flirting with her own troopers, because the taboo and the strict regulations of a command structure reign supreme in nearly every corner of Ahsoka’s life as a jedi, but why in the hell _not?_

Because Fives is here, so _close,_ his scent drafting through her nostrils and making her dizzy, his skin a pretty tan color and glistening with the sweat of their walk. The most bemusing part of this, she thinks, is how receptive Fives is to the way she currently feels - something Ahsoka hadn’t experienced with Lux - and how willing she is to give him the authority over unorthodox territory. Ahsoka has always been steadfast in regarding the clones as respectable men, as individuals; but Fives gives her the drive to explore an alternate path, one that breaks the boundary of colleagues, even _friends,_ and delves into an engagement involving a bit more skin on skin contact.

She starts when she brushes up beside him as they walk, and the back of her hand slides against the armor plating over his hand. If the gesture had merely been the product of ostentatious flirting, Fives would have reciprocated whole-heartedly; however, strangely enough, they both feel a sharp bolt of what can only be described as electricity, whether it comes in the form of palpitation or a nerve-wracking prickle throughout the surface of skin. It’s entirely frightening, and Ahsoka sucks in her breath as her dizzied head forces her to lose connection with this new energy in the force. She feels as Fives wraps his fingers around hers, and she revels in the larger weight of his masculine hand and the caress of the wide pads of his fingers over her knuckles. Ahsoka squeezes back only momentarily before Fives is already letting go of her. 

“Ahsoka,” Fives says, and he sighs. Ahsoka stops when he makes her, taken aback by his unrelenting, confident eye contact, her heart slamming against her chest. His trenchant gaze is only softened by how weary he is, like it’s a burden for him to actively refrain from holding her hand and instead muster up the self-control needed to seemingly talk pointedly with her. 

“We shouldn’t be doing this. I don’t want to allow myself to get too caught up while - everything else is going on. I can’t feel any more awful about myself because of some dumbshit mistake I’ve made. I’ve done that one too many times today.” His words slice through her with more intensity and heat than plasma. Fives holds her shoulders, tight enough in a way she knows he isn’t willing to lose contact with her, but in a strangely prudent manner, as if she’s tried to lunge at him several times and now he’s compelled to hold her back. Ahsoka might have felt nauseated by it all, had she not felt an alternative motive for Fives’s agitation that contradicts the majority of what he’s trying to project onto her. 

In the seconds that sit between them, Ahsoka decides to recalibrate her tactics. “I’m your superior officer, your _commander,_ ” she starts carefully. “What we’d been doing, it’s….completely out of line. Highly inappropriate, _unacceptable,_ the sort of regulations we’d be breaking that would end up with a trial. No. You’re right, Fives, I shouldn’t have behaved like that. It was unprofessional. Our situations are too complicated to risk anything that may deter us from our obligations.” 

Fives frowns at her, his brows quavering on the blurry line of sorrow and confusion. “What? Ahsoka, no, don’t get me _wrong_ here, I don’t personally believe any of _that_ -”

Ahsoka steps back, out of his hold, gently pushing his arms aside as she holds up a hand. “No, I understand. As a superior officer, I shouldn’t expect anything of you, and I shouldn’t use my position of supposed authority to indulge myself. It’s wrong. And therefore, you and me. Together. Is _wrong._ ” Ahsoka keeps her gaze innocently loyal to her words. If he accepts what she’s saying - which she has taken the time in the past to ponder over, concerning its either valid or invalid credibility - then she won’t continue what she’s started. That would be Fives’s conjoined fault, however. 

He stands before her, seemingly at a loss for words, studying this strange facade of hers and trying to piece it together. Ahsoka allows him to figure it out, to call her out on what she utterly _hopes_ he’s aware is, frankly, bullshit. When his voice surfaces the apparent fog he’s battling through, his tone is sharp and determined. “It isn’t wrong,” he states slowly. “That, y’know, _circumstance._ Two people should be able to come together and do whatever they want behind the scenes. Regardless of rank or service. Who cares? With no attachments, there’s no risk. Stuff like that can happen without interfering with one’s duty, to the Republic, or whatever. I feel like it’s just common sense. But that’s just my opinion on the matter.” 

Ahsoka lifts a brow at him. She’s successfully diverted him towards her intrusive topic, which can hopefully be an inducement to Fives’s pretext for guiltily dropping her hand. “I also don’t buy that _you_ think any of that is true,” he says. 

“No? You don’t think I’m taking advantage of you?”

“Advantage of _me?_ Because you’re titled my superior? Ahsoka, it takes two to pop tibanna, here. Of-fucking-course not.”

“I’m a Jedi. Despite any dereliction of duty, I’m still expected to not even _risk_ attachment. To uphold a moral and pure lifestyle.”

Fives just shrugs at that, and Ahsoka hadn’t been expecting anything else. “I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t think about all the weird Jedi doctrines that control you. I’m usually more concerned with how unnatural my own birth was,” he says. Ahsoka supposes that’s pretty fair. “What I _can_ say, though, is whatever you choose to do, Commander, with whoever you want, couldn’t possibly demean your skills and focus in battle, for when it counts.” 

Ahsoka visibly relaxes, and she watches as Fives’s expression crinkles at his notice of her front unmasking. She isn’t sure that he’d meant to be as sweet as how his words have just come across as. They’re both only trying to prove points to serve the craving of their mutual will. “I agree with you. On all of that. We both need to be equipped in self-discipline, but there’s nothing wrong with a….harmless diversion. I guess I just don’t understand why that seems to be what you refuse to acknowledge. Are you not _disciplined,_ Fives? Is that the issue?” 

She sounds mocking, more so than she’d meant to, and Fives retaliates with a gruff noise from the back of his throat, followed by an aggressive rush of air and a half-eye roll. “Ahsoka, you know what my problem is. I already told you.”

“What you said before totally contradicts everything we’ve just established! I mean, we did a pretty good job laying it all out on the table and setting the boundaries, don’t you think?”

Fives’s jaw tilts sideways. “I’m not a stranger to expressing myself provocatively, if that’s what you mean. The truth is a damn dangerous thing. It’s gotta be said, though, by someone or other.” 

Ahsoka huffs, finding herself annoyed. She crosses her arms tightly over her chest. “You lied to me, Fives.” 

Frustration has never been a pleasant wear on Fives, and it becomes obvious that Ahsoka’s pushed him too far. “Is this seriously just about getting under my armor? You’re allowed to just ask, you know,” he says, suddenly, and the hard look in his eyes portrays more than what Ahsoka had been ready to confront. “I know it’s not an art they’d teach you at the temple, or anything, but since we’ve both agreed on a few misconceptions, you _can_ just say the words outright.” 

Despite the fact that he _still_ dodges the one issue posing as a barrier between them, it comes to Ahsoka’s attention that perhaps she’s failed to comply by her original rule when they set off together: it’s just the two of them, alone, so what’s the point in allowing any form of professional deportment define their confidential interactions? Embarrassed, and fumbling foolishly on the spot, Ahsoka quickly decides to proceed without any exaggerated hysterics. “That’s not what this is about, Fives,” she says in a rush. “At least, not completely. And you know it.” 

A seemingly distressed hand travels swiftly through Fives’s hair, while his other coupling of fingers drums over his gray and blue kama. “Well? Do you want to get under my armor?” 

The question _definitely_ breaches some kind of unspoken boundary in need of surpassing, but Ahsoka scoffs anyway and solidifies their previously tacit desires in her own way. “What’s that matter right now? Do you?” 

“Do I what?”

“Want to….you know.” Ahsoka blushes. “Let me get close to you.” She realizes how artless her substitution had been for a situation requiring a more unrefined touch. 

“I don’t compute,” Fives says dryly. 

Ahsoka’s own bout of frustration overrides her discomfiture. “Something’s on your mind, and it’s stopping you from exploring what we obviously both want,” she says starkly. “You’re not telling me what it is. Instead, you are _lying._ ” 

Fives narrows his eyes in a challenging manner. “Why are you so certain I _want_ you crawling into my blacks?”

“Gods,” Ahsoka sighs. “I don’t think _I_ want to, at this point.” 

Her sudden exclamation, devoid of any valid truth, has more of an effect on Fives than she could’ve hoped for. He’s a lot more desperate for her than it seems, apparently, because he pauses as if stunned, before taking a moment to regain himself, as if in preparation. 

“What were you and Rex talking about?” he then asks, softly. Ahsoka feels hopefulness shudder faintly off the edges of her heartbeats. _Finally._

“Right before you came in earlier today?” 

“Yeah.” 

“I’m...not sure. Nothing pleasant, if I’m being honest. He’s in a state of distress. I talked him through it but it was so vague.”

Fives frowns a bit. “So...he didn’t say anything considerably important to you? Like, something that would seem….unfitting, for a clone captain to tell a Jedi Commander?”

Ahsoka’s eagerness to dig out any remaining conflicts and just _get on with it_ diminishes as a not-unfamiliar tension illuminates the murky glumness foreseeable in the direction of this topic. Her mouth thins. “No. He didn’t.” 

“Damn. Huh, I could’ve sworn he’d told you something,” Fives says almost thoughtfully, his head tipping slightly in confusion. “It was the only thing I could think of that would have explained the way he was acting.”

Dread spills up Ahsoka’s throat and nearly clogs her voice. “Tell me something like what?” 

“Something he’s been bothered by for the longest time now. I mean, for good reason. I’m surprised he even figured it out on his own, considering how laser-bolted he is towards his fucking - _purpose_ in life. Technically, it’s obstructive and forbidden of command.”

“Yeah, okay, I think I’ve gauged just how bothered he is by it,” Ahsoka says quickly. She’s distracted, though; _Fives knows?_ She’s barely had time to consider her recent discovery, what it could mean, how it would make things going forward. It still seems like a hazy, delusive-dripped scene out of a dream. “What was it exactly he was trying to tell me today, Fives?” 

He pauses, and his voice goes grim. “Sounds to me like you already know.”

It's much less the tension that wrings awkwardly between them, and more of the weight of this impending knowledge that makes Fives and Ahsoka share momentarily acute eye contact. “Rex has - well, he…. _thinks_ he has _feelings_ for me. Like, romantically.” Ahsoka winces. It hasn’t been verbalized before, not even when she was face to face with Rex himself, discussing the very matter. 

“He doesn’t just think he does, Ahsoka. He is _completely_ head over heels for you,” Fives says matter-of-factly. “It just happened, from what I saw. Naturally.”

Ahsoka blinks rapidly and casts her gaze somewhere off of Fives, bringing her hands up to hug the opposite arm. “Those types of things don’t happen by specific intention,” she rambles, speculating. “Usually it is unexpected.” She would know. She’s been unfortunate enough to have it happen to her once. She hopes something like that doesn't happen again. It nauseates her to think that Rex, her captain, is now having to face the same ordeal, and _she_ happens to be at the brute end of it. 

“It bothers the shit out of him,” Fives continues. “He feels….I don’t know, disgusted with himself over it. He’s been actively denying it for so long, but it became so obvious he _had_ to notice.” 

“I can’t believe I never knew until today,” Ahsoka sighs in exasperation, shaking her head in dismay. “I sensed it from him pretty easily, too, but maybe I’ve just never paid much attention to what he projects into the force.”

“Rex confided in me when he realized I was actually observant,” Fives says, in a way that suggests _that was a long fucking time ago._ “And he was _already_ so fucking obvious about it. Call me defective, but….I don’t really consider those things - Rex’s specific _dilemma_ \- to be so appalling. Most of our brothers would joke, keep stuff to themselves, and, you know the rest, but this is more surreal than sex jokes. Especially for Rex. I had no issue with it, when he finally confessed about it to me, whereas I’m sure most brothers would’ve been uncomfortable with it. I guess I just feel bad for him. It seems like an unfortunate aspect of life to deal with, when you’re bred solely for war and have no documented training for _romance._ ”

Ahsoka can hardly process how wide of a range Fives must have, when it comes to muddling over random but time-consuming ponderings she assumes most clones couldn’t even manifest in their wildest dreams. “That’s why you’re being hesitant with me,” she says, finishing out her reason for starting this discussion. “Because of Rex.” 

Fives shakes his head, and his chest deflates in a defeated manner. “He doesn’t deserve to get hurt, Ahsoka. I don’t think this is his fault. I respect him too much to….” He trails off before his voice can waver from a misplaced sense of culpability.

“How do you feel about it?” 

“How do I feel about what?”

“The fact that Rex has feelings for me. And, yet, you and I were given the opportunity to spend time together.” Ahsoka says it like it’s hard to articulate, like she’s receiving a disturbing amount of disappointment just by uttering these words. “To….feel this way.” Both her and Fives are aware of what she means by that, of exactly what it’s alluding to; yet, it’s hard to pretend there’s no degree of mutual delinquency they feel, at the prospect that there’s something so undeniably _more_ involved with this, that plays the role in eliminating that exact prospect. 

“I’d never pity him. He’s a great man. I’m not half the man he is.” Fives hesitates, his eyes brimming with a dim glumness. “But, when you put it like that, I guess it makes me feel like shit, to be honest.”

“You know what I meant.” Ahsoka and Fives stand there, their gazes downcast and refusing to meet one another. 

“Yeah. Well. I don’t know,” Fives says, inhaling a long breath that seems unfulfilling in volume. “Can’t say _I’d_ want to be in his position. We weren’t exactly given the extra time or luxury to deal with complicated shit like that, but….”

“ _But_ what?” 

“Nothing.” Ahsoka’s not exactly satisfied with his answer, but he doesn’t really need to say anything else. “How do you feel about it? Him liking you?” Fives asks. 

“It’s not -” Ahsoka begins, but she stops herself, drawing her bottom lip up between her teeth. They know what the other means, and if they say much else, the emotional repercussions would be overwhelming. “No. I don’t know. I haven’t given it much thought yet.” 

Fives opens his mouth to reply, but it snaps back into place. Ahsoka looks back up at him. “He’s my Captain,” he nearly whispers. Ahsoka nods in understanding, her heart sinking. 

They only need a few more seconds to regain themselves, until they watch wisps of fog curl around their feet and they head off again, falling into silent steps beside one another. No matter how uncomfortable they both may be with it, for a little while a cold wash of uncertainty and the hurtful stab of relinquished promises nets a reality between them, a strange turn of events that they both realize, deep down, they have an obligation to accept as the premise for any upcoming proceedings. 

Fives’s holochart information had been accurate. They don’t walk very far before they cross a log fallen horizontally over an elongated waterbed, to a bush-covered hill overlooking the small island’s cliff. The long, spindly bridge, covering the expanse of the crashing waves far below to the arch just across from this one, rocks continuously with every quivering undulation of its rope-handles. Ahsoka feels a groan gurgle up her throat when she sees that white fog drapes along the middle of it, so thick that they can’t make out the other side. The bridge is so rickety and seemingly unsturdy, too, that for a moment she worries if Fives and the weight of his armor will snap and plunge right through the wooden panels; he reassures her, however, by reminding her of his jetpack. An accessory he chooses not to use a second time, for now at least, because his training has taught him better than to fly headfirst into areas where the sight of destination is compromised. His helmet slides over his head before they begin the ascent.

Their wobbly walk across the roped bridge is loud, windy, and unnerving, just as distasteful as Ahsoka had been apprehensive of. She shudders constantly, the cool air hitting her skin caked in dried sweat and flecks of collected dust. It’s easy for her to call upon the force while she steadies herself, but there is a time when they pass through the thicket of the fog, scarily suspended high midair at _least_ one klick above the roaring oceans with a blurry field of vision all around them, where they can at _least_ spot the protruding greenery from the top of the upcoming island, where Ahsoka lets her mind travel to her and Fives’s conversation, distracting herself. Her foot collides on an unforeseen panel, much too flimsy in its strength, and her heart lurches as she slides, a heavy gasp falling from her mouth all in one moment. 

ARC trooper reflexes come through from directly behind her, and Fives’s hand quickly scoops beneath her upper arm. Ahsoka steadies herself fast, of course, the arm she had batting through the air causing a slow swirl of white mist to arch above their heads, but Fives’s tighter-than-hell grip on her arm refuses to release even as they sway solid to the spot. 

“I’m okay now, Fives,” she calls out. 

“You want to jetpack the rest of the way? Other side’s locked on,” Fives replies, his voice modified under the helmet. “Unless you don’t think you’ll trip again.” 

Ahsoka’s left hand pales from the strength it emits to grasp the rope railing. She turns her head, and sees the large, gloved fingers wrapped around her bicep. For some inexplicable reason, a wide smile breaks out over her face and her stomach rolls with the laughter that suddenly bursts from her. She can sense Fives’s unsettled confusion, and if he hadn’t had his helmet on, she would’ve tossed her face behind her shoulder to see his perplexed expression. 

“What? What’re you laughing at?” 

“Oh, Fives - nothing!” Ahsoka leans her head back, unable to rid her face of its broad grin, and she stares up into white nothingness as she’s continuously wracked through with fits of giggles. Fives’s hold on her still remains intact. “Just let my damn arm go, and we’ll cross the bridge the rest of the way!”

They make it across the bridge without further conflict. They head out through more jungle, on an island with an ever higher altitude than the one they’d trudged through before. Ahsoka focuses on grounding herself within the force, with all sorts of life thriving vibrantly in her surroundings. She tunes in to Fives, someone with one mess of a brain, charged in foremost on his current assignment and drilled-in conditioning, but an overlapping storm of racing thoughts and unprocessed emotion fill the expanse behind it. Ahsoka calls upon a sense of neutral content, as she’s been taught many times, instead of the burdening sadness that wants to plague her based upon whatever it is that she finds and feels. It’s during this silent process that Fives, angling his foot to avoid the mushy texture of some foliage in a divot alongside their trail, bumps into Ahsoka’s side and effectively sends a lightsaber hanging from her right hip to the dirt with his hand. 

His reaction and handling of the small situation, mixed with her own, leads to them loosening up once again in each other’s presence. They begin to talk again, cutting through the silence with conversation, and despite a lot of things it feels just as natural and comfortable as it had before. Rules, regulations, and whatever command structure they’re supposed to adhere by falls away, forgotten, until it’s just them, Ahsoka and Fives, boldly overcoming a boundary that seems more out of place than the thought of two people engaging out of pure enjoyment of one another’s company. 

Fives is animatedly telling Ahsoka about a particularly wild story about something that happened during ARC training, involving a very close brother of his and the tentacles of their instructor at the time amidst their simulated swamp environment, as they trail up a grassy road that winds upwards, the thicket of the jungle on one side, and marking the drop of a herbage-cluttered cliff on the other edge. They may have been awarded a nice view, on this particular side of the island, had the planet not been laden over with its blanket of fog. A structure of some sort, tucked against the side of the cliff on a small platform of land, catches Ahsoka’s eye as they make their way up the track. It must be a house, because something of a porch juts out from beneath the roof, which comprises of moss-heavy stone plating, blending in nearly perfectly with the wide, spectacularly angled leaves overshadowing it from above. 

“Look,” Ahsoka gasps, pointing a finger down at the house from their birds-eye view, just in case her words are swallowed by powerful laughter to incomprehension. Fives almost teeters over on his own feet, just as drunk on his aching stomach muscles straining to accommodate his joyous expressiveness. For a terrifying half second Ahsoka thinks he’s about to collapse off the edge of their pathway. Even still, she struggles to suppress how widely stretched her mouth is, each row of teeth tearing away from the other as more giggling rips through her. 

“Civvies?” Fives nearly chokes. Watching him in no way helps the heaving in her chest and the quavering shake in her shoulders; Fives’s easygoing, smooth attitude is so addicting, so _contagious,_ especially when he loses it with laughter. Ahsoka loves his hearty, strong laugh, and even the way his cheeks, already so high on his face, lift to meet below his eyes whenever the corners of his lips curve upwards.

Ahsoka shrugs. “I don’t know,” she wheezes. “Cozy place, though.”

They continue on towards their destination, without a clear reason to take their assignment all too seriously. Anakin hadn’t mentioned any potential threat within the jungle; it gives them the room to fool around. 


	3. Part One - Continued

When they do reach the clearing, the cargo vessel parked neatly out in the open, swarmed with low fog and nearly sinking into the wet mud below it, Ahsoka and Fives have progressed to much calmer, more psychologically erudite talk. Still, the threat of a genuine smile tugs at Ahsoka’s dark lips as long as the fatless planes of Fives’s face inclines towards her, his deep eyes gleaming brightly and full lips at close range in her line of sight. Nevertheless, they both simultaneously snap to attention, slowing their steps and becoming unnaturally alert of their surroundings. Ahsoka snags both lightsabers from her criss-crossed belts, her back arched lowly as she heads behind the gooey trunk of a jungle tree on the very edge of the clearing perimeter. Turning her head, she sees Fives with his back pressed against his own cover a few meters away, deeces drawn and his helmet pulled over his head. 

Igniting her sabers, Ahsoka motions Fives with her hands to perform a manual perimeter sweep. He nods once, and turns swiftly on his heel through the scrubs and brush. Ahsoka inhales steadily, taking only a few moments to connect and potentially detect; but she finds nothing, no sense of lifeforms with deadly intent or anxious awaiting flowing through their signatures. There’s only Fives so noticeably present, focused and concentrated as he makes his way on the outskirts of the clearing towards the open ramp of the vessel, seemingly ready for Senator Katrich. Ahsoka leaps out of the bundle of leaves, fists clutching her glowing sabers digging into soft mud, before her legs sweep graciously in an arch above her head. Now in the open, exposed, Ahsoka quickly draws her weapons up and zeroes in on her surroundings, but the feeling hasn’t changed. They’re all clear, no damn _pirates._

Ahsoka briskly shouts an all clear to Fives, who stealthily slips out of the jungle to join her ascent up the ramp. Once inside, most of the lighting they receive in the hull after the faint natural light of the jungle has faded out behind them is the green illumination of Ahsoka’s lightsabers, held at arm's length while they maneuver carefully towards the cockpit. 

It’s the largest part of the ship, the cockpit, which seems to Ahsoka to be more of a lounging area. It’s only slightly brighter up here, because of the glass outlook in front of the pilot and copilot’s chairs, but milky white still shrouds the view, absorbing most of the sun. Besides the front console, the walls are lined with starchart stations and panels accessing most of the ship’s interior mainframe. Ahsoka doesn’t know why the hell Anakin didn’t send R2 with them; they’d get the job done a _lot_ faster. 

“No one’s on board except us and a bit of free time.”

Ahsoka looks up from her kneeling position on the floor. Fives is standing just around the corner with his helmet clipped on his belt and his deeces tucked back in their holsters. He’s detached his jetpack from his back, which leans against the corner of the wall he stands besides. Ahsoka turns back to her work at hand, trying to focus before a smile can get the better of her. A small crate of tools that she’d pulled from a storage closet sits on the ground, along with the durasteel plating that had previously been covering an important subsection of the wall. Ahsoka leans into the small hole she’s made. 

“Equipment for this would’ve been nice,” Ahsoka says. “Considering there’s no perilous threat we’ve needed to deal with. It wouldn’t have been too much of a hassle to lug around with us.”

“Tell that to the Jt-12 and that bridge we crossed,” Fives replies with a huff of laughter. “And I’ll let you be the one to take that up with Skywalker. I’d want to make things interesting too, if I was a general forced to sit my ass down on soggy grass when there are literal _palaces_ on this planet.”

“Normally I’d say camping out in nature sounds much more intriguing than dining with a wrinkled slime-ball who jacks off to credits every night,” Ahsoka retorts. “But I know what it’s like to be stranded days on end in unknown terrain. Not as fun as you’d think. I doubt the fact that this place is more _wet_ would make much of a difference.”

“You’re a strange one, Tano.”

Ahsoka tips her torso out of the wire-filled compartment to look up at Fives momentarily. “Don’t get too comfortable over there, Fives. We still have to infiltrate this ship’s entire mainframe after confirming everything else is operational. And we don’t exactly have an astromech to download everything, so we’ll just have to stare at the information long enough to fill out a satisfactory report. Mind giving me a hand?”

“Would it help if I checked for datachips in that supply closet? They’d help display anything we wanna look at on a screen.”

“Uh - yes, please. Thank you.”

Fives disappears again, and Ahsoka switches out her tools. She’s expecting their time isolated aboard this ship to be a rough one, and not necessarily because she’s compelled to trigger every system integrated within the vessel by hand. On the contrary, tedious manual labor may be the only thing that makes this stay more bearable, if she can manage to make it last as long as possible. It’s for the best, she reminds herself, that it seems pertinent to avoid any casual mingling with Fives. 

He returns a few minutes later, the evidence of a successful supply run clamped in his hands. “What should I get started on?” he asks. Ahsoka sets her tools down, flexing herself back onto her perched heels, breathing deeply as she becomes scrupulously aware of his presence behind her, waiting. She smooths her palms over the short expanse of her tunic edge before standing up and turning around. 

“You can access the mainframe and navicomputer,” she says, and points across the room to where the front console is. Fives has no trace of a smile, not even a smirk; instead, there’s a foreign sort of bashfulness that wanders through his eyes. It would’ve been easier to ignore if Ahsoka hadn’t been so receptive to his every twitch, to every flicker his lashes manage or to the meaningful quirks in his brows. “Everything we’d need to check should all be accessible from there.”

Fives nods, and strolls away from her. Ahsoka watches the back of him for a moment, before stooping down to the floor again to proceed with her work. Standing face to face like that should _not_ be as disconcerting for them the way it….sort of had been just then. They’d spent a solid standard hour and a half, with no one but each other as company, telling stories and sharing various degrees of sentiments together. The only difference now, she supposes, is they’re confined to the enclosed luxury of this Neimoidian vessel, no longer required to travel on foot. It’s private, this environment, and quiet, supplying both a place of rest and a much less humid setting for a padawan commander and a clone who’d trudged through moist, stringy fog and chunky mud. It’s almost amazing, how effectively this ship can alter a dynamic. Ahsoka wonders if she’d be keeping such a close, painstaking watch on Fives, or, perhaps, any other trooper of hers, nearly sweating with the exertion of keeping her intrusive theoretical conceptions from swarming her head, _before_ her time on Kedavo. 

To her luck, the distance between them, as well as their coercing of the ship’s internal hardware, ensures there is no maintained eye contact. It gets a bit messy, their work, and most of the time is spent in contemplative silence. 

“When is General Skywalker supposed to contact us?”

“He said at oh-nine hundrded he’d comm me to discuss a run-through of the ship’s interior regulating systems. I can either return to site with the collected information and complete a report, or we could hang out here for a few extra hours and relay every damn thing we find to Anakin via comlink.”

“Do you know which option you’re gonna choose?”

“Like hell I’m delaying our departure any more than I have to. I’ve already walked the return once, it’s something I’d like out of the way as soon as possible.”

“That’s fair, I guess. Any luck with the ventilation venues?”

Ahsoka briefly wonders why he asks. “Done with those. No virus secretions. I’m trying to process a security reroute, now.”

“That going okay?”

“For the time being. Should be fine, but, I can’t say for sure yet.”

Fives makes a noncommittal noise. 

“What about that navicomputer? How are you doing?”

“Haven’t touched that, yet. The mainframe’s filled with _loads_ of shit I’ve got to sift through.”

“I can help you in a second.”

“Sure. If you’re not risking wasting any time. Of course.” He’s tried making a joke, but it sounds more awkward than what Ahsoka would’ve expected from him. 

“Of course.” 

Ahsoka’s skin has adjusted to the dry air on board, now regulated and a bit more comfortable, without having to emit a coverage of sweat in order to combat the external humidity manipulating her body temperature. Her heart picks up a rapid pace, all the same, as she drags the back of her glove across her forehead and slowly sets down her tools. Ahsoka glances over at Fives, who has his back turned to her, leaning and swaying on his feet only when necessary as he tweaks the console monitors. She finally musters enough courage under her heavy coating of guilt-influenced apprehension to rise to her feet and walk up to the pilot’s chair in earnest, her nerves unnecessarily blanching internally. 

“Any luck with the datachips?” Ahsoka asks, her voice small. 

She keeps her gaze on the hands that nudge aside a durasteel panel in order to twist some complex wiring. When Fives turns to look at her, though, she can’t help it. The glass before them shines a dull white glow against the side of Fives’s face, highlighting the flat protrusion of his straight nose, his cheekbones, making his eyes appear more soft. It’s her fault their gazes hold one another longer than they probably should have. 

“They’ve been surprisingly effective,” Fives says, the mumbling edge to his tone suggesting his slight exasperation. “But I’ve had to hotwire the identification scanner screen to act as a datapad for the mainframe data.”

“That’s a lot of work.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

“What’s the status now?”

“Well, I wanted your opinion on this.” Fives takes a subtle step back to make room for Ahsoka. She regretfully takes notice of how his jaw has hardened into a stern line, how his arm presses awkwardly to his side and his fingers display whatever jitteriness his nerves are feeling as they fumble for a hold against his hip. It takes a lot within her not to press into his ebbing senses and his ransacking bout of emotions. Ahsoka side steps over to him and peers down at the screen. Numbers and letters blare across a continuously rolling list which would be better translated in a file. 

“What am I looking for?” 

“Right here.” Fives’s hand comes into her field of vision and traces a finger over a particular subsection, indicating its assigned pool of information. “This is the cargo record. Neimies supplied no documented on-board intricacies, but the sensors within this one secluded section suggests there may be traces of such.”

Ahsoka can feel his breath cascade over her back lek. “Yeah, you’re right about that. It’s a long shot, but we don’t have much to work with, here. How about we download these specific records onto a datachip to take back with us, just in case?”

She can almost feel him nod from behind her, and she wonders if he’s pressed in any closer. “Sure thing, Commander,” he says. “Downloading _every_ last detail is probably not efficient for these purposes.”

Ahsoka moves to get out of his way, when they find themselves exchanging broad grins. She watches him fish in his own selected toolbox for a datachip when it suddenly occurs to her that it hasn’t even been _that_ long aboard the vessel, and they’ve already made excuses to be in the same close proximity. Everyone enjoys company in particularly isolated settings, especially amidst the grounds of expected labor, but this is different - as they’ve previously established. Ahsoka disregards the negative thought that merely serves to twist her gut in a shuddering fit of unprecedented rapture; they’re _commander_ and _ARC_ _sergeant,_ for the love of the Force. They _should_ be able to get as close as necessary, under whatever circumstance, in whichever setting, without threat of consequence. It’s what their professionalism requires of them. 

“Here, let me -” Ahsoka encloses his wrist with her palm, quickly slipping the datachip from his hand. “You get started on accessing the navicomputer. I’ll download this into a file and check whatever else there may be to investigate.”

Fives looks at her, his lips parting as if easing his hand away to get to work takes the breath from him. “You got it.” He picks the box up off the console and sets it down on the floor, squatting beside the copilot’s chair to access the network underneath. “Have fun reading,” he adds. Ahsoka looks over at him, suddenly a bit more relaxed, and suppresses a snort. 

“Thanks.” 

Soon, it’s been a while since the datachip plugged into the ship has flickered from red to orange and stayed like that, not yet the green flash of light, which indicates that the chosen subsection has been successfully downloaded into a secure file. Ahsoka leans her hip against the edge of the console, holding the makeshift datapad before her as she uses one finger to scroll through the mainframe data.

She prides herself on being able to be distanced from Fives, crouched low on the floor, by only a meter and a half for a marginal stretch of time without feeling invaded by primal urges and dirty thoughts. It’s progress from her utter lack of self-control from earlier in the day, when it had only been mere seconds before she became overwhelmed with striking desire; and even _that_ had been before those thoughts revolved solely around _one_ man, and she’d allowed them to escalate into a dilemma a jedi padawan has no business getting herself involved in. Even so, Ahsoka begins to lose all hope as this current pride suddenly fades fast. 

Fives isn’t even doing anything enticing enough to be distracting; not at _all,_ and yet Ahsoka _still_ finds herself wanting to tear her eyes from the work at hand and stare. His feet are arched under him, supporting broad, spread thighs whose knees occasionally touch the ground, in the same way his back will either arch forwards or straighten backwards. His brows are knit in concentration, and his hair has slumped in waves not unlike nearly every clone after the tiring exertion of battle, but not as dramatically so. She still hasn’t allowed herself to connect her senses to whatever array of thoughts may be stirring within Fives, and she can’t even lie to her desperate self at this point; she hopes he’s positively _broiling_ on the inside to know what she’d feel like against him, to fulfill the ghost of a promise they’d abandoned under the premise of unfair conflict. Gods, she’s so _ridiculous._

“Ahsoka,” Fives says, eventually. Ahsoka’s cheeks burn a bit, knowing he could probably feel her checking him out. 

“Yeah?”

“Come here.”

“Huh?”

Fives’s face contorts with the stipulation of urgency as he turns to look at her, but Ahsoka is already scrambling down to meet him. More eager than she’d ever be willing to admit, Ahsoka props the thigh beside Fives up on her folded calf and with her foot as the fulcrum, while her other leg sprawls out, her bent knee touching the ground. Now level with him, and close enough to where she can imagine their cheeks brushing, Ahsoka lets herself look at him. 

“What do you need help with?”

Fives holds her gaze much longer than necessary. Ahsoka finds she starts to shrink into herself, feeling pinned beneath his stare like a stuck repair droid. His expression morphs slightly, strained tension filling the short space between them, a sultry heat spilling into the dark depths of his eyes, his chin dipping seemingly as low as his chest as if inviting her to trace her eyes over the armor there. Ahsoka wonders for a split second if it’s all in her imagination, but she can _definitely_ feel him seeping into the force now, his….passion strong, if the searing blush that she’s certain tints pink all the way up her bristling lekku is any indication. 

“Navicomputer’s hacked,” Fives says, flicking his eyes towards the wide compartment before them and allowing Ahsoka a moment to ease her rampaging hormones, brimming with heat. The low, suave tone Fives suddenly uses to talk does absolutely _nothing_ to help how worked up Ahsoka can feel herself getting. “No signs of malfunction. I did find that the hyperdrive’s linked to whatever defense system this vessel has for protection, but I can’t access that.”

“What’s the issue?”

Fives’s shrug rolls down his entire arm and to the hand he has gripping the edge of his knee. “I don’t think I have the right tricks up my sleeve to pull that kind of a conversion off. I figured an elite starpilot’s padawan might have picked up one or two things off of her Master.”

Ahsoka’s lips slide into a smile. “Oh, really? You need _me_ to syke through the demolitions files? They didn’t teach you basic ship management in ARC training?”

“I thought you’d be more eager to show off your skills.”

Ahsoka huffs out a breathy laugh and leans back to grab the necessary tools, shaking her head. She’s all too aware of the unrelenting smirk Fives bares at her, with that devious gleam in his eyes to complement the look. “Oh, I’m already confident in _my_ skills, Fives, I’m just questioning _yours_ now,” she fires back. “Making me go out of my way to do extra work.”

“Sorry. Guess I’ll have to find a way to make it up to you. Show you how I _do_ have some pretty adequate skills.”

Ahsoka feels most of her body flush at that, her breath subtly hitching as she stretches forward into the space behind the dislodged panel. She’s on both of her knees now, one hand braced on the raised platform within the compartment while she quickly finds the correct accessible machinery. She suddenly realizes that Fives has a full view of the back of her in this….specific position. She’s glad he can’t see her face right now, because her eyes pop wider than normal and her bottom lip instinctively sucks up between her teeth. Ahsoka _knows_ his gaze falls hotly all-too-often on the shift of her hips whenever she moves, her knees spreading farther apart to accommodate her bent position into the small shaft. He’s pent up within the force, but the trembling heat prodds at him too strongly for him to truly resist; when Ahsoka feels it, as a result, that flurry of lustful passion crashes through her two times stronger. Not being able to see him, but _feeling_ his desire, caused no doubt by this bodily arrangement, sends such an overpowering thrill through Ahsoka. 

She hears plastoid gently thud against the floor, like Fives is shifting forward, and then suddenly there’s a hand that settles over her back. 

Ahsoka’s face begins to _really_ burn, and if it isn’t for the torrid sensation sizzling along her skin in waves, she’d think she’s frozen to the spot. Fives’s hand doesn’t move, only stays in one fixed spot upon the exposed divots her spine makes, even as he leans into the space Ahsoka currently occupies. They’re so close now - he’s basically on _top_ of her - and Ahsoka wonders why this doesn’t make her uncomfortable. Sure, she’s intaking all sorts of sensual ecstasy right now to fuel the beginnings of her tingling groin, but they’re not even _talking_ ; Fives’s breath, his large, bulky presence, is much more enticing in the moment than Ahsoka could have expected. 

Fives watches her hands pry tools beneath colored wires. “I wasn’t kidding when I said I couldn’t actually do this,” he says, a smile evident on the edges of his tone. 

“I know,” Ahsoka laughs. “I figured you had enough sense not to make things more difficult.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” Fives retorts. “I have a habit of prolonging more mundane projects in need of tending.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing you got me to hurry this up for you.”

With a few more twists of her wrist, and a switch of two cords, the desired information comes to life on the datapad underneath them. Ahsoka ducks her head out of the broken-off panel compartment, easing back into a crouch, and Fives follows her. 

When Ahsoka looks up at Fives, they’re a lot closer than they had been before she’d stretched into the makeshift cabinet, and there’s not a single ounce within her that wants to pull away. His hand has disappeared from her back, she realizes, and a small stint of disappointment streaks through her lust-clouded mind. Fives has a look so dark, so desperately _needful_ that he imposes into her hazy crystal eyes, that Ahsoka can’t help but submit beneath it. It’s a strong, intense moment, where there’s a loss for words, and breaths come in short, ragged spurts. 

Fives’s hand rises between them, and Ahsoka shifts her gaze from his to look at it, the new center of attention. She watches intently and with her mouth nearly watering as it gently slides onto her knee, so narrow and small compared to his right next to it, and the touch ignites searing sparks along her raving skin just beneath the fabric of her leggings, hot enough to where she worries his armor might get scorched with its intensity. His hand begins to travel, working its way up _painfully_ slowly to the wider expanse of her leg. Ahsoka has never felt this exhilarated, staring through an ardor-laced fog as his fingers dip towards her inner thigh, getting closer to the stretched edge of her tunic. She can almost hear Fives’s heart, buried beneath plastoid layers, a sporadic rhythm as his hand shakes ever so slightly in its progression. 

The spot between her legs throbs in a way Ahsoka has never experienced, being this surreal and under the touch of someone heading in that exact direction - it’s _so much,_ and she still has the undying urge to touch the hand’s owner - 

Ahsoka grabs Fives’s wrist right before his fingers can curve under the highest part of her thigh. She looks at him, hunger raging through her, but a flash of fearful panic surges through Fives’s eyes and he tries to jerk his hand away. Ahsoka doesn’t let him; she maintains her tight grip, keeping his hand steady against her thigh. 

Pride is the only thing that keeps Fives in an upright position, even as he eyes Ahsoka warily, his gaze sheepish and uncertain. That part, Ahsoka regrets; she wishes he knew just how _certain_ she is about this, all of a sudden, how willing and desperate she is to continue. She has a few ideas on how to show him, on how to ease his conscience and make him see _exactly_ what it is she’s willing to do. 

Ahsoka drags her hand up his arm, unsure if her lungs have deflated or if they’ve expanded to where she’ll never be able to take a breath again. She feels over the coarse material of his pauldron, and to the blacks snug around his muscled neck. She sighs audibly when her fingers crawl up his skin, the contact a spark of renewal to the promises they hadn’t uttered while walking together in the jungle. Ahsoka watches his lips through lidded eyes, heavy with the fumes of Fives’s scent, so musky and _intoxicating,_ as she caresses over his jawline, swiping her thumb across his chin before moving back to his ear and cautiously digging her fingers into his dark thicket of hair, testing her waters. 

Fives’s hand finally leaves its spot on her thigh to fold over the fingers she has on his head. “Ahsoka,” he whispers, and he sounds as if he’s wrestling back the viciously animal part of him. “Maybe you should….think about this.”

Ahsoka ignores him and presses herself closer, tilting her head back so she can hover her parted lips just under his full, wiry ones. She has base needs, she’s come to accept, sensual ones that she may never receive the opportunity to indulge in again. This is like a damn gift from the force, the most natural and fortuitous occurrence she’s ever engaged in, and in no way does she want to pass it by. She persists, because Fives is the one who touched her first. “There’s nothing to think about,” she says, in a similar whisper. “All I’ve done for the past month is over _think,_ and question, and _deny_ myself - I don’t know, but I want to face it, not ignore it. This is - perfect, Fives, it’s just what I need.”

Fives searches her eyes a moment, still charged with stern doubt, but Ahsoka can feel his pulsing enrapture, a lust that keeps him rock-still while she clings to him, immobile. “I have no idea if this is perfect for me,” he replies steadily. “But it must be, I mean - you’re here, and I’m just so fucking _tired_ of every- whatever. I’ve always….Ahsoka, I really want - you’re so -”

“You can’t think about these things too hard,” Ahsoka coos, and finally, she can feel his disquieted hesitation diminish into what he’d been struggling to make obsolete, left open and bare. And it’s a good thing; because, to her, they’re two people caught up in a life they hadn’t chosen to be obligated to, who came together simultaneously with grueling troubles, until their bonding experience proved to entail their bodies for extra support as well, amidst their own personal chaos and turmoil. So what if they….messed around? Who would it hurt? Certainly not Ahsoka, nor Fives, whose unfettered mind can easily distinguish a regulated command structure from a meaningless, squalid expedition for a benefit. Ahsoka can feel it within him. 

Her heart reels with over-pumped, flowy elation when Fives tentatively puts an arm around her waist, drawing her into him only a hair’s breadth closer. 

“Can you kiss me?” she pleads. 

Fives doesn’t answer, only lets the heat of the moment consume him as he envelops her soft lips with his mouth. A stimulated hum vibrates up through Ahsoka’s mouth, and her eyes squeeze shut. Fives releases her fingers to cup her neck, nudging aside her lek to make room for his large hand. Ahsoka draws up even closer to him, knitting her fingers through the back of his hair and sprawling her free arm up and over his other pauldroned shoulder. She doesn’t have any particular experience with kissing, but she sure knows what she _wants_ to do with her lips; Ahsoka parts her mouth, blindly opening and moving against the curve of his lips, tipping her head to experiment with all sorts of angles. 

“I’ve got you a hell lot more eager than I could’ve hoped for,” Fives murmurs against her. “For someone who’s _just_ noticed how hot my facial hair can make you.” This time, there’s no trace of regretful hesitance. He’s all confidence and sexy vitality, and _gods_ if it isn’t such a pure thrill for Ahsoka. 

“I was hoping you’d show me all the ropes,” Ahsoka says, feeling breathless. She kisses him, a solid plant of her lips, a display of her active fervor. 

“Trust me, you’ll be walking away from this with your brain in six dimensions at once.” Ahsoka laughs faintly before gasping as a hand runs firmly down her side, squeezing over her hip and thigh. She’s embarrassed by the noise for only a fraction of a second before Fives leans his head back and nearly removes the close proximity of his lips. 

“ _Have_ you done anything like this before?” he asks. Ahsoka feels slightly impatient before she wonders if he wants to gauge what kind of skill he’ll have to work with. 

Her first instinct is to guffaw and spit a _no,_ until it dawns on her that, by definition, she _has_ at least had her mouth on someone else’s, in a quick imitation of a passionate make-out. Ahsoka grimaces inwardly anyway. “Not exactly,” she replies. “Nothing previously exhilarating. And definitely nothing like what I want you to do to me right now.”

A feral sound grunts from the back of Fives’s throat, and Ahsoka watches a smirk spread across his face. “Oh, yeah?” he says lowly, and she stiffens a bit when his face dips unexpectedly to her neck. “Only rule I’ve got is tell me if you don’t want me to do something.”

“ _My_ rule is keep going and don’t stop,” Ahsoka says, but Fives doesn’t need more convincing. It’s ridiculous, she knows, and she can feel a small chortling laugh rumble against her skin. 

Fives sucks on the skin of her neck so vigorously Ahsoka has to lean her head back almost at every lap of his tongue, at each press of his lips. A wet trail leading down from under her jaw hits the chilled air of the room, but it’s quickly combated by the utter warmth of his mouth, making her shudder. Every skillful administration of Fives’s mouth makes Ahsoka melt further into him, losing herself, suddenly furious his armor is a barrier between her and his skin. 

When she feels the sharp points of teeth tracing her throat, Ahsoka squirms against him, rearranging her arms so her hands grip the top edge of his cuirass. She alleviates the pressure of her knee on the floor by shifting her hips up towards his thigh until she’s perched upon it. Settling down, her pulsing groin sits directly against the sloped length of his plated gauntlet and a strangled noise escapes her. 

Fives pulls off, and before she knows it his lips crash onto hers again. He immediately deepens the kiss from the tentative state of the last one, and he uses one hand to press between her shoulder blades while the other explores whatever curves she has to offer. Ahsoka revels in his aggressive flair, her position fixed in his arms, the pinch of his thumb digging above the bone of her hip. 

Fives suddenly licks into her mouth with such an endearing finesse, his teeth nipping at the plump skin of her lips; he digs into her like she’s the tastiest meal he’s ever eaten, and for a while all Ahsoka can do is keep her mouth open and make small noises. She relishes in how Fives’s kiss, quickly morphed into something stringed with their spit and strong with passion, makes her brain swim on the spot until she’s drunk on his lips. 

Ahsoka eases back into a rhythm with her mouth, not quite at the dominating pace of Fives, but she’s a quick learner. His tongue is a strange, solidly slimy sensation that constantly bumps into hers, and Ahsoka finds she can enjoy it when she finally figures out how to slide her own tongue back against his. She hasn’t gotten to the point where she can prod her way into Fives’s mouth, but she likes his sense of authority. Fives has more experience, and so Fives is more able to emulate their needy and lustful dispositions. 

Fives gnaws at Ahsoka’s bottom lip with his teeth before pushing his way into her mouth again. He repeats, until Ahsoka’s left with no choice but to whine helplessly against him. Whatever noises her foggy head allows her to make, Fives gets a heated kick out of that drives him harder against her, Ahsoka’s miraculously been able to notice. She palms her way back into his hair, tugging at brown strands and loving the feel of it. 

“Your headtails,” Fives pants into her mouth, drawing away. The tips of their noses brush, and Ahsoka immediately seizes the pause to splay her fingers across his face, her thumbs rubbing over the sweep of his goatee. She realizes just how out of breath she is, her muddled puffs of air mingling hotly with his. “Fuck, Ahsoka - I have to put my mouth on them. They’re, like, sensitive, right?”

Cradling his face, Ahsoka presses a series of kisses against his mouth, wet and slippery. She tests her tongue and teeth gently on his lips while he’s momentarily subdued from animalistic lust. “Yes,” she breathes at him. His talk - her headtails, combined with his mouth - whatever it was exactly that he’d said, it blared a massive _go_ sign within her head, along with a tingling lurch in her sizzling core. “ _Yes,_ yeah, go ahead.”

Fives moans a victorious restoration of excitement and quickly brings up the hand that had been kneading her ass and thigh. “Hells yeah,” he mutters. Ahsoka can see the glimmer of his teeth as his lips lift into a smirk, teeth that she now realizes she’ll harbor intimately wet memories of, and a rusty color floods her cheeks at the thought. She has the sudden urge to lick at those teeth, all shiny and white, until Fives’s hand strokes down one lek, from montral to montral. His touch is featherlight and his fingertips brush over the appendage in a way Ahsoka can only describe as _teasing_ ; her mind dissolves as pleasurable tingles overtake her, because she’d been right - in a stimulated encounter like this one, headtails have been known to provide a blissful whirl of mind-reeling pleasure. 

During the times she’s gotten herself off, Ahsoka will occasionally rub the tips of her leks between her fingers, but it’s a mild occurrence. She’s never had them caressed the way Fives is right now, though, while she’s _this_ fucking turned on and there’s another hand with her that can take up a larger expanse of space. Ahsoka whimpers at the first drag of Fives’s tongue across her headtail. He leans in so close, his eyes predator-like in their watch of her face, that Ahsoka has to grapple around the clunky line of his cuirass and placart with her hands, the thickest part of him, to keep herself as close as possible. 

Spit glazes over white and blue stripes, and the intensity of it is so amazing, it truly is, but the mouth Fives has working delicately, yet fervidly expertful, is the main attraction of Ahsoka’s spinning head. When he starts to suck, mouthing at the side, the last bit of embarrassment Ahsoka may have felt over her uncontrollable moaning disappears as she writhes atop his thigh, whining and stuttering her hips to multiple stops the more she instinctively wants to rut against his armor. 

“This feels really good, Fives,” Ahsoka says raspily, bewildered, as a sort of compliment.

“It better,” Fives says, in a growling way that vibrates against her tail. “This one tog - I think she was a _seamstress_ \- she made me play with her tails the whole time. Long things, they went all the way to her toes - I think she wanted me to suck on those at the same time, too.”

Between the obsessive lapping and the slip of the headtail’s tip into his mouth, Ahsoka slowly intakes what he’s just said, and it doesn’t sit well with her. She’d never thought submission beneath an ARC’s mouth working wonders on her sensitive lekku could somehow cross with the line of malaise that stirs in her gut. Ahsoka gasps and jerks in a way that makes her knee thunk against Fives’s other thigh gauntlet the moment his hand steers around her neck to fondle at her back lek, and she’s back to an unthinking and blissful state. It doesn’t really matter; she has to understand that. 

The realization that she may reach a climax, as inexperienced and wound up as she is, just from Fives’s sloppy mouth and trickle of fingers on her headtails _alone_ becomes a foremost concern. Ahsoka is eager to find out what she can unravel from Fives, what it is he might have to offer her. She lowers her hands down to his hips, lingering on his utility belt to allow her racing heart a moment to calm itself. This is so - not _foreign,_ oddly so, because these types of thoughts have crossed her mind much too often - but _new,_ an illicit exploration of proscribed measures, to the point where it is nearly distressing. But it’s still so desirable, and Ahsoka finally hooks her hands through the crossed belts that support his kama - _like hers,_ she realizes - slung just above the area of interest. 

Fives groans heavily when she slips her palms over his codpiece and presses slowly. Ahsoka can feel his delight steam off of him, and it sends a heated assurance through her. Encouraged, she kneads her hands more sturdily onto him, tapping into the sheer promise of what it is that lies beneath this certain piece of plastoid can do for Fives, what sorts of things it can drive him to do to _her._ Fives sits up straight to look at her, obviously ecstatic by her directive initiation, and slightly rocks into her hands. Ahsoka feels like she’s going crazy, like she’s been drugged, or maybe cast under some wild spell, because his movement jostles her snug position on his leg and she’s compelled to lean back into the hand swept beneath her lek. 

The other hand lays it’s fingers on Ahsoka’s collarbone. She tips her chin down a bit to watch what it does next, recognizing a weightless air inflaming her chest at the threat of the unknown. Fives drums his fingers over the small opening in her tunic, placed square on her chest, and Ahsoka suddenly wishes she wasn’t wearing the top. Fives seems to savor the moment, letting his one hand take its time tracing over the curve of Ahsoka’s breasts, as carefully and gently as if he’d been instructed to fondle a family of ociock eggs. As she feels her nipples protrude visibly from beneath her clothes, Ahsoka’s grip on Fives’s codpiece unintentionally tightens, enough so that his face contorts with a stiff reaction, and his expression alone makes Ahsoka drip more into her leggings. His hand finally cups one tit head-on, nearly mashing it against her breastbones like he’s trying to roll something around within it, but Ahsoka’s lips pull apart for a smile, enjoying the sensation. 

Grinding on each other’s armor and hands, Ahsoka’s breasts being groped with increasing vigor at Fives’s crude fascination, their husky panting soon becomes noticeable through the film of lust that Ahsoka finds _impossibly_ lewd between them. Even with all that she’s imagined, vaguely obscene images cast behind her eyes could never have prepared her for the absolute thrill this moment and its buildup offers for her hyperactive senses doused in the preliminaries for full ecstasy. She and Fives look at each other, a timid virgin vowed beneath a mostly-celibate clan and a robust soldier seeking to reprieve his spell of touch-deprivation, and their lips meet in a fierce, desperate kiss. 

As Ahsoka struggles to dominate his mouth, trying eagerly to nick at his bottom lip with unfolded fangs, before his tongue expertly traces a toe-curling line from her lips to the back of her mouth, effectively shoving any asset she may have mustered out of his way, Fives reluctantly draws his hand away from her chest to secure a firm grip along her side, nestled just above her jutting hip bones. Somewhat satisfied with her own exploration of his codpiece, unable to feel her target anyway beneath plates of alloy, Ahsoka grips Fives’s shoulders. 

“What now, Ahsoka?” Fives huffs desperately, kissing the corner of her mouth in such an unmastered abandon Ahsoka’s never seen before. “ _C’mon,_ give me something - it’s your call.”

Ahsoka finds it hard to think when it’s so difficult to breathe properly. Not that she hasn’t operated under various measures of pressure before, but, _this_ pressure is surely different. Her eyes trail to their right, where the copilot’s chair stands undeterred before the monitoring console. “Let’s move to the chair,” she says hurriedly. Ahsoka has no plan, can not conjure up what may or may not unfold upon the large seat in this exact moment, but moving their position off of the floor seems like the next step of an unfiltered game. Fives wastes no time in complying. Keeping their lips locked, Ahsoka digs her fingers beneath where the seal of his blacks meets his cuirass and tries to haul him upwards, fumbling to her feet. Fives scoots himself back and up masterfully, she isn’t sure how, until he falls into the seat, drawing her quickly onto his lap. 

Ahsoka shifts so that her knees dig into his kama, too small to effectively straddle him, but in a position where her ass sits high on his spread thighs, loosely snug in the space between them due to her lack of width; able, however, to lift herself to meet Fives’s face. She presses herself into him as close as possible; cupping his face with both hands, Ahsoka moans headily into the slide and tug of their lips as they kiss. Fives runs his hands down her sides and travels even further until both of his hands squeeze her ass, firmly feeling her up through the tunic’s fabric material. Ahsoka’s mouth opens wide in a gasp and she can’t help the stream of giggles she heaves over Fives’s ear as he continues to palm at her rear, moving his mouth sloppily across her cheek. 

Leaning back, she finds Fives is smirking at her, and he squeezes the fleshiest part of her ass before teasing his thumbs along the inner parts of her thighs. Ahsoka brings her own hand down from his pauldron, and stares at him not-too-innocently as she thumps her fingers atop his codpiece. She squeezes as best as she can, her fingers curling into the bodysuit tucked just beneath his alloy plating, and Fives releases a strained groan, the back of his head pushing into the chair behind him. They’re sitting crotch to crotch, at this point, and it makes Ahsoka squirm to think about the whole package that lies beneath all this clunky, bulky covering. 

“I want your armor off,” Ahsoka says shakily, and she begins to trace the blue V-shape painted down his chest. 

Fives’s body simmers with an agreement, hot and stimulated beneath his suit, but if Ahsoka doesn’t pick up on the intrusive edge in his force signature, then she doesn’t miss the narrowed lining of his gaze, that lustful blaze worried down to hesitance. “Yeah, me too. You want all of it off, or just _some_ of it, or….?”

Ahsoka leans into him, tucking her head beside his utility pouch, to hide a mix of a frown and a small snort. She lifts a hand to play with his goatee, feeling the way his hands slide back up her back, and she decides to be completely honest. “I want to take off every bit of your armor,” she murmurs, and her hand falls from the scratchy hair at his chin to swirl idly along his shoulder plate, his jaunty pauldron blocking her view of the dark blue stripe. “And strip your blacks off, too.”

Fives shudders against her and kisses the top of her head. She can feel his mouth travelling over the striped patterns there, and each brush of his goatee on her montrals aids the sizzling sensation between her thighs. “I like the sound of that,” he hums, and it feels like his tongue is _wrapping_ around the horn closest to the mouth he envelops around it, holy _gods,_ “If you’re interested in the direction that’ll take us….of course.”

With a frustrated growl, Ahsoka turns her head sharply to assertively smash her lips on his, a crease running between the white markings hovering above her shut eyes. “I am interested, Fives,” she says, taking a moment with an arched back and the occasional brush of her nose on his upper lip to stare fixedly at him. She adds, “I want this. I do, Fives. But, it sounds like _you’re_ the one who should tell me if you’re uncomfortable with any of this.”

That certainly doesn’t sit well with him. Fives frowns deeply at her before hugging a large arm around her shoulders, his other hand cupping the limited space beside her throat, and he kisses her with such ferocity that he soon reduces Ahsoka to a shivering and helpless mess. “I’m not _uncomfortable,_ Ahsoka, I think you can sense that much off me.” Fives pauses, and squeezes both sides of her jaw with a thumb and forefinger. “I guess this is still new, y’know, you being an officer and - well, me. And I’m worried you might regret something.” 

The lie is a strained one, and it sounds unnatural enough that Ahsoka doesn’t have to be a Jedi to deduct what the real issue is. He’s right, she can feel his thrumming attraction for her body just _bathing_ in undercompensated lust right now, and the slightly awkward nature of their positions in rank that somewhat clouds over their engagement renders his verbalized concern a valid one. But remnants of the premise to their previous conversations still poke through Fives’s desire, and besides, she knows he’s too smart to miss out on an opportunity like this one, with how willing and open she’s been towards him so far. “Stop it,” Ahsoka sighs. “Don’t make everything so damn complicated, you know I’m not regretting anything.”

It’s almost comical how definitive Ahsoka sounds, as submissively slumped forward in Fives’s lap as she is. Fives seemingly composes himself in the small second he uses to study Ahsoka’s pretty face, before he jerks her gently to the side to kiss the exposed skin of her shoulder. “Alright, okay. Sorry, I wanted to make sure you understood the fair rules of the trade. I can’t be expected to drop my kama for a girl who won’t take her leggings off, right?”

“You’re fucking impossible,” Ahsoka grumbles, shivering at a wave of heat that ripples through her skin at Fives’s gnawing exploration. 

He suddenly cradles her face in both hands, angling her head up in his direction in the same controlling manner as he had her before. “I’m still not used to that language, sweetheart,” he says sincerely, on the verge of laughing, and he kisses her before she can snark back. “Lets get my armor off so I can show you a better use for that mouth of yours.”

Ahsoka has only a vague idea of what that could imply, because there are so many things she wants to do with her mouth on Fives’s body, but the deep and promising tone of his voice makes her spine trickle with replenished salacity. Desperate and eager, she feels herself nod 


End file.
